Tuesday 17 November 2009

Baby Zilla is about to take it’s place in it’s new home

Baby Zilla 012 (Small)

Baby Zilla will be taking it’s place in it’s new home over the next week.

It will be up in my roofspace and ready to be cut loose on the HF bands. I have added a new feed loop made from RG213 coax in place of the wire loop you see in the photo above. It just needs some final tweaking and then it’s ready to go.

I can’t wait to try it out using my latest additions to the shack ! a couple of Heathkits, the old but favourite of mine HW-7 and the last model they sold the HW-9. I picked these up a couple of weeks ago, the HW-7 is working OK, it has a modified reciever and RIT, The HW-9 needs some attention but i have had some QSO’s with it on 80 mtrs. 10 mtrs is not working and it does need some other jobs doing before it is fully operational.

P151109_01.03_[02] (Medium) tn_hw7

The box on top of the HW-9 is my home made BLT tuner, it is a great little ATU.

P151109_01.03

Octopus Tester.

This circuit dates back to at least 1935 and is a simple cheap adapter that converts just about any oscilloscope into a component tester. It causes a component's current vs. voltage characteristics to be displayed on an oscilloscope's screen. The name "Octopus" is attributed to a Marine Corporal who reinvented it in 1968 while working working on Tactical Navigation Systems at NAS Newriver, NC. He called it "The Octopus" "...because the first one was so messy with wires sticking out all over the place,..."

I made mine using an old 6v heater transformer, I was surprised just how  well it works. I can see it being one of the most useful bits of test gear in my shack.

Here are some photos of the traces on the scope.

P091109_22.52 (Small) P081109_23.50 (Small) P091109_00.01 (Small)this one shows a 4.7uf capacitor which gives an oval shape, depending on the size of the cap it could be a circle, the one here shows a 1uf cap .P081109_23.51 (Small)  P091109_00.08 (Small) This line shows a 1k resistor

and this one a 10k resistor.

P091109_00.09 (Small)

A vertical line shows a dead short, there are other shapes for diodes, zenors and it is a great transistor checker. Also makes it easy to ckeck FET’s and Mosfets.