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Old 8th Jan 2022, 12:21 pm   #61
kalee20
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Originally Posted by Terry_VK5TM View Post
Or the use of esoteric components the average hobbyist has no hope of getting their hands on - still prevalent in a couple of hobbyist magazines today.
Everyday Electronics used to have a monthly feature called Shop Talk - any difficult-to-obtain components in that month's projects were highlighted there, with name and address of a supplier.

They certainly did make an effort to ensure supplies were available, so as not to disappoint readers.
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Old 8th Jan 2022, 12:49 pm   #62
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Default Re: Magazine projects

Ian White, Radcom columnist and all-round good guy, used to joke that it was fun to look over F G Rayer's latest ouvre each month to see which familiar components had come out of his cupboard.

He must have broken down his prototypes once the article had been run for a couple of months.

George Dobbs was a prolific author of magazine projects, mostly for PW. I was down in Dover before Christmas one year, visiting with the Kanga gang (Ian and Dick) when Jo-Anna Dobbs phoned to say there had been a disaster. George's shelving in his study had collapsed, torn from the wall dumping all his prototypes and test gear over his bench and onto the floor. Ian had some strong shelving frames which would sort the job. We planned a trip to Syd Proops the following day, so I drove up to London with Dick and Ian in the little 205, and all the racking. After the visit, Dick and Ian took the train back to Kent as I and the racking headed north.

There are plenty of tales behind magazine projects (and their aftermath)

The racking featured in George's photo on the inside cover of Sprat for many years. It took the load!

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Old 8th Jan 2022, 6:26 pm   #63
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I had that meter Joe, I've found a clearer photo.
The first two I bought were faulty so I took them back to the shop.
On the second occasion the set-zero pot wouldn't turn so I didn't even take the back off to fit the battery and snip the red wire across the movement.

The guy at the counter tried to argue that I must have tampered with it, and he could tell that I had soldered the wire back on!

It was replaced with a good one, but I didn't return to that shop for a long time.

Re Post #53 and finding out that FG Rayer wrote Sci-Fi was rather like my realisation that F C Judd wrote and performed the electronic soundtrack in Roberta Leigh's "Space Patrol".
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Old 8th Jan 2022, 9:33 pm   #64
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Possibly one of the worst mags for junk box designs and corrections was PW in the 50's.

Affectionately know as Camm's Comic

Ed
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Old 9th Jan 2022, 2:59 am   #65
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Hi!

Quote:
Possibly one of the worst mags for junk box designs and corrections was PW in the 50's.

Affectionately know as Camm's Comic
There were many little annoyances in P.W.'s circuits of the "sloping lettering" 1950s era, of which omitting pin numbers around the valve symbols on construction diagrams was the most common grumble I had when reading them!

Also for some reason, whenever projects appeared using the EM34 "magic eye" indicator, it was surprisingly common to find one of the 1M resistors shown connected in the target–anode lead (pin 5) and one of the triode–anode/deflection electrode pins (pin 3 or pin 6) directly connected to the h.t. supply – this mistake cropped up in at least three designs! I wonder how many built these things and then wondered why there was no green glow – I know EM34s can be appallingly short–lived but silly wiring mistakes don't help!

B.S. 530, the current standard for electronic symbols at the time, recommended showing the "target–anode" of an eye–indicator as an open rectangle to indicate "fluorescent screen or target", a practice I still use to this day!

There was an R.C. bridge published in Mid–1958 that had all the components list out of sync with the reference numbers on the circuit diagram – another notorious example, and who struggled with the "P.W. Robin" about 37/38 years later with it's innumerable circuit and PCB design errors?

Oh yes, I think the "P.W. Wimborne" music–centre project from 1978 had quite a number of mistakes & corrections in it as well!

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Old 9th Jan 2022, 5:07 am   #66
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One thing I never really understood was that quite a few of the mags [SWM, PW, RadCom, Radio Constructor] continued publishing AM ham-transmitter designs for VHF and HF into the 1980s, by which time VHF had gone FM and HF had gone SSB.

I wonder just how many new G8-hams built an AM-only VHF transmitter in the 70s, bought crystals for it, and then got disheartened when there was no reply to their plaintive CQ-calls?

"Tuning low to high" ceased being a thing on VHF in the early-70s!
I was first licensed in 1972 as G8GGP, my first TX was a QQVO3-10 modulated but a single EL84 bodged from a number of designs, this was just at the beginning of SSB operation on 2, within a couple of years it was flogged on and I bought the obligatory Liner Spew.
As a listener me and a mate built from a design in, I think PW, a pair of duplex light transmitter/ receivers, they were fun to play with, we got about 200 yards range between his bedroom and mine…happy days
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Old 9th Jan 2022, 10:02 am   #67
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I was still tuning high to low in 1974 when I was first licensed as G8JRR. Ther were still some stations using AM, but quite a few had, by then, moved to FM and I used to slope detect them. It often seemed to me that the guys who had gone FM had done so to avoid Television Interference, rather than try and sort it out. Then repeaters and channels came along and it was never the same for me

Cheers

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Old 9th Jan 2022, 5:38 pm   #68
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Aub - your experiences and sentiments were exactly the same as mine, operating as G8DLH in the early part of the 1970s.

Al. / Jan. 9th.
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Old 14th Mar 2022, 10:51 pm   #69
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I've very recently joined this forum so have loads of threads to catch up on. Reviving this one to add my two penn'orth.

My first construction, with considerable help from my father, was a two valve battery radio based around a Repanco DRR2 coil, built into a spare extension speaker cabinet. I must have scrapped it eventually but I don't remember when or why.

Some time in the early 60s I built a somewhat modified version of the Wireless World oscilloscope. One reason for modification of the design was to use multiple small bent aluminium chassis from Smiths in Edgware Road rather than a big one to save money.

Some years later I started to rebuild it and never finished.

Many years later still I gave in to progress and bought a PicoScope.

I also built an audio signal generator which I think was a WW design, again with some modifications. I still have that and have used it occasionally in recent years.
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Old 5th Apr 2022, 5:01 pm   #70
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I'd love to know if anyone built the Ham Radio Today morse & RTTY decoder project from 1987
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archiv...RT-1987-01.pdf
and the RTTY update:
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archiv...RT-1987-06.pdf
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Old 7th Jun 2022, 8:04 pm   #71
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Hi!

I managed to get a "Purbeck" Oscilloscope in unknown internal condition with absolutely nothing on the CRT despite many experiments with all the controls, and a dim yellow "power" LED – I wonder if I've inherited another duff mains transformer? (I think it was 250–0–250V @ 60mA plus 13–0–13V @ 500 mA!) – I have a Farnell DTS12 which had the same symptoms, again from a duffy transformer with a s/c 600 V winding!

Alas to say I've not started the "Purbeck" yet as I'm trying to catch up on all the things that got behind when I couldn't work in our front room in the cold! (Thankfully now fixed with a new boiler for next winter!).

Chris Williams
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Old 7th Jun 2022, 8:54 pm   #72
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I built the Electronics Today International 413 one hundred watt amplifier in the early seventies. Great design for the time. They called it a guitar amplifier, but it was excellent as a disco amp. Very rugged.

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Old 7th Jun 2022, 9:52 pm   #73
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Did anyone build a Selective call unit for CBs in the early 1980s ? I can not remember what mag it was in possibly PW or Every Day Electronics. I bought the parts and while waiting for them to arrive discovered some mistakes in the circuit vs PCB, so did not bother making it.

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Old 8th Jun 2022, 12:10 am   #74
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Radio and Electronics World was quite pro-CB and featured some good CB related articles including one on the Sanyo LC7137 PLL widely used in UK radios of that period. I'm thinking your selcall unit is most likely their project which starts on Magazine page 38 / PDF page 40 of the June 1982 issue of R&EW, which is here:-

https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Rad...EW-1982-06.pdf

It looks like it uses a rather specialised IC which might be hard to find nowadays, but I take it you still have them somewhere. If you do (presumably you have two) why not try to get them up and running? What was the problem originally, do you remember?
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Old 8th Jun 2022, 6:26 am   #75
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Hi!

I managed to get a "Purbeck" Oscilloscope in unknown internal condition with absolutely nothing on the CRT despite many experiments with all the controls, and a dim yellow "power" LED
I only ever had one 'real' fault on mine and that was quite early on. As I recall it was a high voltage 0.1uF 1000v cap or thereabouts used for flyback suppression. From memory it was connected to the collector of a T05 transistor like a BF258 video output type. A long time ago.

The cap failed leaky/short. Seem to recall it was a metallized polyester tubular type of the sort that used to be used as filter caps across the mains in old TV's.

That was the only fault in 1000's of hours use.
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Old 8th Jun 2022, 7:00 am   #76
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I built the Practical Electronics shortwave receiver from the blueprint in the May 1965 magazine. Remember winding the coils on bits of old plastic pipe, with paper insulation. It actually worked, though the batteries were too expensive to use it for long.

Years later I built the 'pong' tennis game from a PE design based mainly on 555's as I recall. Laboriously made about 6 pcbs using a Decon Dalo (sp?) pen. It sort of worked but never got put into a box and lived many years in the loft before it was cannibalised.

I recall building the Texan too. It worked fine at first, until I sold it to a school friend, and of course the output transistors promptly blew and he gave it back for fixing. A new set and within a short period he'd blown it again!
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Old 8th Jun 2022, 11:45 am   #77
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My earliest (and most complicated) magazine project was a digital LED 3-digit capacitance meter which I made as part of my college course practical. We were given a pile of magazines eg Everyday Electronics, Practical Wireless, that sort of thing and we could use something from there or provide our own.

It was an ambitious project made from rows of Cmos IC's on a postcard-sized piece of veroboard, and it never worked. I spent ages tracing every wire and everything seemed ok. In the end the lecturer took it home and tried to get it working but he couldn't either. Knowing what I do now, it was probably a typo in the diagram, of which there were many 'erratas' published in subsequent issues. Obviously I didnt see any as the college magazines were well thumbed and not in any order or even complete.

The only real successes I had was the Maplin PWM train controller which was great, and a heart monitor which flashed an led with every beat from just 2 electrodes. The maplin magazine was quite well regarded ISTR.
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Old 8th Jun 2022, 2:15 pm   #78
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I'd love to know if anyone built the Ham Radio Today morse & RTTY decoder project from 1987
One of yours..?
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Old 8th Jun 2022, 5:59 pm   #79
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I built the Purbeck Oscilloscope and can say that the original transformer that was supplied was faulty from the off. The phasing was wrong amongst other issues. If I remember correctly Douglas Transformers supplied the ammended tx. The scope did work after a fashion but if the case got knocked then the trace would jump all over. Found that this was down to all those thin wires being used instead of a proper double sided pcb track layout. It now is awaiting for double sided pcbs to be made for it and has been for many years.

I built the audio mixing desk with all those BC109 transistors and can say that it worked very well. Also built a few of those audio compression circuits for use on SW transmitters and they also worked very well.

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Old 8th Jun 2022, 7:38 pm   #80
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Originally Posted by SiriusHardware View Post
Radio and Electronics World was quite pro-CB and featured some good CB related articles including one on the Sanyo LC7137 PLL widely used in UK radios of that period. I'm thinking your selcall unit is most likely their project which starts on Magazine page 38 / PDF page 40 of the June 1982 issue of R&EW, which is here:-

https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Rad...EW-1982-06.pdf

It looks like it uses a rather specialised IC which might be hard to find nowadays, but I take it you still have them somewhere. If you do (presumably you have two) why not try to get them up and running? What was the problem originally, do you remember?
Hi SH, Thanks but that is not the unit, never had that mag. I also see an advert for CodeCall 4096 just a few pages further on.

John.
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