Show And Tell 24th June 2023
The Central Coast Amateur Radio Club held a very successful Show and Tell event last Saturday at our Kariong clubrooms. The theme was “I made this could you”.
Peter kicked off with a display of his Blittzortung lightning detector. Try saying that quickly.!
It is a German made SMD kit that use an E and H field antenna to receive lightning energy and in conjunction with other units networked to a central server, triangulates strikes and displays them on a map. The map also shows a plot of the lightning strikes and the detecting sites. Peter showed us the map including a storm in Europe with a detector in NZ picking it up. This was an interesting insight into QRM on the HF bands.
Peter then gave an interesting presentation of HF Land Mobile and Marine transceivers, their evolution, and their capabilities compared to amateur equipment.
Don followed with information on a Cavity Duplexer he developed for the UHF band. It was made to Don’s usual high standard.
Bob had an interesting display of items. First up was an antenna tuning unit for the WW2 era Wireless set No.19. Bob had one of these radios as his very first ham radio. Bob showed us an industrial cooking oven controller he used to repair. It utilised a factory mask programmed microcontroller that wasn’t available so Bob designed a replacement PCB which a mate programmed – problem solved. Bob’s last item was an earlier version of a WIB – Web In A Box that allowed remote monitoring and control of both digital and analogue devices.
After a quick lunch supplied by Glen and Steve, we got back into it.
Our visitor on the day – Bob VK2GQF had heard about the event and bought along a series of items he made including 3D printed Anderson Power Pole distribution blocks and antenna wire winders. Bob topped this off with some very neat laser etched business cards he made. Thanks Bob.
Steve showed us some station accessories he has made including wall plates for coax cables for the shack. For mobile operations, Steve showed us custom Anderson jumper cables for both battery power and solar installations.
Graham showed a digital VFO he is making to convert an old crystal controlled Codan radio. The VFO uses readily available modules including an Arduino, LCD, rotary encoder and digitally controlled oscillator mixed up with a bit of software. Graham’s second item was a CRO training aid he made using a clock divider chain hacked off a commercial PCB combined with some logic gates to produce the desired signals. This shows that you can make useful items using parts from multiple sources.
Glen was our last presenter with a very interesting display of large model ships he built by hand. These included the infamous Titanic (no model mini sub included), The Vasa – a Swedish sailing warship that sank just hours into it’s maiden voyage and the famous Cutty Sark clipper that even made a trip from South Australia to the UK in 116 days by sail.
Each of these models was made from individual hand steamed and bent wooden planks to make the hull and corresponding attention to every part including rigging, fittings and decoration. Glen spent 500 to 600 hours construction each model
The CCARC thanks all presenters, visitors and spectators.
