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Category Archives: Electronics
Photo Tour of Sutro Tower
David July, who runs sutrotower.org, posted a fascinating set of pictures documenting his tour of San Francisco’s Sutro Tower.
Surplus Electronics Wiki Growing Fast
The past few weeks have seen a lot of activity on the MightyOhm Wiki!
Since it was mentioned on the Make: blog last week, helpful readers have been making significant contributions every day.
One highlight of the wiki is the Surplus Electronics Resources page, which I first posted about in February. It has more than quadrupled in size since then and now includes surplus shops in the United Kingdom and Canada in addition to dozens in the United States. If you haven’t seen this page yet, you should definitely check it out.
If you don’t see your favorite electronics surplus store on the list, please add it! Several of these “junk shops” close every year due to rising rents and competition online. Anything we can do to keep them in business will benefit the maker community. One way to do this is by making sure that folks know that these resources exist, and this is where I hope the wiki will help.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who has been contributing to the wiki. In particular, thanks for making it one of the best directories of electronics surplus stores on the web!
A visit to the Very Large Array
The Very Large Array (VLA) is an NRAO-operated radio telescope facility located approximately 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. The array operates on the principle that data collected from each of the 27 independent dish antennas can be combined in such a way that the array acts like a single, much larger radio telescope.
I had a chance to see the VLA for the first time last year while traveling through New Mexico.
Upon arriving at the VLA, a visitor center welcomed us with some exhibits about research being done at the facility a short video, a self-guided tour, and a gift shop where you can buy space-themed souvenirs and Astronaut Ice Cream.
A few of the exhibits were particularly interesting to me given my previous experience with microwave RF circuits. One was a cross-section of a 3.6cm feedhorn and receiver setup as found on the dishes (view the full size poster more details).
The highlight of the tour, of course, is the opportunity to get up close to an operating dish. After a short hike from the visitors center, I found myself in the shadow of one of the VLA’s massive white dish antennas. Every minute or two, the dish moved slightly to stay pointed at the same point in the sky despite Earth’s rotation. Standing under the dish, listening to the roar of the refrigeration units that keep the receivers cool, I couldn’t help but wonder if I should have pursued a career in radio astronomy!
Our last stop on the tour was the service yard. Each dish is rotated out of service for maintenance on a regular basis. This is where the dishes are maintained in the safety of a huge repair hangar.
Was my visit to the VLA worth a 100 mile detour across the New Mexico desert? Absolutely!
Want to see more? There are lots more pictures of the VLA in my Flickr photostream.
Rigol DS1052E 50MHz to 100MHz scope hack
Hack a Day posted yesterday that a guy named Ross turned his 50MHz Rigol DS1052E into a 100MHz capable instrument by removing part of a lowpass filter on the analog inputs.
I think it remains to be seen whether there are any other mods required to make this work like a real DS1102E (ie. does the 1052E firmware limit the minimum horizontal timescale?) but this is hardware hacking at its finest!
Read more about it on the EEVblog forums.