Antenna aid 3

Oi! tried to get on the club net but when using the new antenna no signals were picked up. Investigations will have to take place!

Whispering City presents

Lllllllast nnnnnnniiiggghhttt wwwwwwaaaaasss qqqqquuuuuiiiitttte mmmeaty!



Kaya King - Wacky races and ice cream flavours looping criss-crossing drum beats and pre-recorded samples. A summer delight.



Molten Gods - Three men who fell from the skies with arms full of FX pedals, make the loudest racket of noise they can forcing blood to drip from underneath your nails.



Horatio Pollard - electronoise (or was it micronoise?) of a solo man, which has you nodding your head till it drops off.



They loved it!

Antenna aid 2

The jubilee clip is fastened on underneath the ground plane holding the tube in place with the coax running down the tube to the rig. To get an idea of size, here is the radio antenna fixed up to the hand held hanging over the door.



That little blue thing on the wall is this...

This is what to do Saturday

That's right, 27th June at Chameleon (Angel Row, above Clinton Cards) £3, 8pm. Noise. Oi! will be doing the doors (or is it scores?)

Antenna aid

With thanks to Terry for his donation of the antenna, I am now aided and equipped when sending and receiving signals over the radio by boosting her transciever.


This is a ground-plane design with 4 copper legs and a point at the top connected together at the centre with a small square (corners bent) of aluminium. On the underneath is a female N type connection to attach a lead to the rig (radio).


Terry also helped me to put together my first lead.


This is combined of 'plenty' of Rg58, also known as coaxial cable (enough to run down a supporting tube and into car/house/boat to rig). The following image presents an exposed piece of coax (RG59 in this case which looks the same but has different properties such as impedence.) A - outer plastic insulation, B - braided copper, C - inner dielectric insulation, D - copper core.


A quick search on wikipedia provides great details about coax.

Also needed for the lead includes a male N-type connector to attach the lead to the ground-plane...


and a 50 Ohms BNC plug (one that you have to identify in the Foundation license exam). Apparently the only way to tell the difference in Ohms is by the thickness of the centre pin of the plug, but this takes a highly skillful eye to identify and not necessary in the exam (in my case just ask the stall holder).


And finally, as the Yaseu has a particular connection for the antenna, I purchased an S.... (will have to look this up as the name escapes the mind).


In brief, to make this lead the coax cable is stripped to the braiding on both ends, the plugs unscrewed and certain bolts threaded on. The brading is unravelled and then trimmed to the bolt edge. Measuring the centre pin in the housing helps to identify how much of the inner insulation to trim thus exposing the core. This core is then pushed inside the pin and soldered. Screw on the housing to the bolts. Do the same for the other end of the cable using the suitable plug. Test that there is no continuity between the centre pins and the housing one strand of the braid could do this, so check before fixing all together, and Bob's your Uncle.

Now the next thing is to take a tube which is used as a support


and from one end of the tube cut down about an inch in a cross formation.


Then using a Jubilee clip...


tighten the tube around the N type underneath the ground plane allowing the cut strips to overlap. This should provide a sturdy pole to fix upright. I am yet to find the best place to fix this new antenna.

Nocto Loco 7

All loose parts are fully wired up and soldered from having unscrewed the knobs and moved the PCB board around. However, further testing shows that still the nocto loco fx pedal is no-worko.

Last Wednesday I was explained each step of the circuit diagram by John at the club. This has helped to clarify how the signal and sounds are being affected (rather manically all in all) and bit by bit I am coming to grips with understanding these diagrams.

So, the plan is to use this guide and test each part of the build hoping to spot the break.If all else fails the nocto will have to be taken along to the club again and I will be asking (John) kindly for help and hopefully inspect the nocto with an oscilloscope should there be one available (see pictured above) and identify the problemo.

Big Muff Pi

What is this?


A present?


For Oi!?


Leigh you are so dear to this woman.



Electro-harmonics Big Muff Pi is one 'beast' of a distortion fx pedal, with tone control allowing you to sweep between low and high frequencies and sustain for drawing out harmonic noise this can sound beautiful and edgy. This appears to work wonderfully with guitar input over voice as it deadens the vocal notes yet rings out the guitar signal. This must be something to do with frequency (I did do a test using a bass guitar through the Muff but it didn't respond well) as well as being a 'hot' signal (as I have read before regarding pedals and signals). We can all look forward to Bitumen's musical adventures using the Big Muff Pi.

Nocto Loco 6

You little...

I have it! (or so I think). I remembered that the digital multimeter could be used to test continuity. Setting the dial on the meter to the sounder function, the two pointers can be targeted on certain areas of the circuit to see if power runs though the fx pedal, if so then it bleeps!


With this in mind and wanting to test that the octave and pulse switches are soldered to the PCB board (as previously mentioned there were issues with solder sucking), so by reviewing the circuitry I had an idea where each point was connected to and thus placed one pointer on one point and t'other on, well, t'other. In doing so, the majority of points showed up as continuous and she seems to have found the culprit!

I will solder a new wire between said points on the circuit board and then test again.

Nocto Loco 5

So fixing a new connection between the IC chip and voltage regulator has worked, we have a reading again of 4.9V. So comes the power up check....

No, no, no. Alas, even though meter readings show the power is running through the circuit, the LED is not illuminated nor can I get a single sound out of the nocto loco. I have looked over all the solder points and they aren't touching each other or frayed. It might just have been when the octave and pulse switches were soldered on the wrong side of the PCB board, now shorting out or something. Once again through solder-sucking to fix the past problem some contacts now look a little patchy.

More problem solving is required, for another day I thinks.

Nocto Loco 4

I have been battling with the nocto loco once again. The case is open and all wires exposed, the multimeter is set to on and copies of all instructions are finally printed out. (In retrospect, it is always a good idea to print these out first.) With thanks to Will of Bowood Electronics I now have a new voltage regulator 7805 which after solder sucking the last fried piece out has had to be wired up directly to its conectors. Good news it that it appears to have worked! Horrah! There is a steady reading of 4.9V. Oh and I decided to buy a new power plug, one that could be identified as centre negative and 9v DC (you just can't guess these things).

This little diagram came in handy for understanding centre negative
And so this is the opposite, centre positive


So, things seem to be going well in terms of the tweaking of power, voltage regulator sorted and working, now checking the IC chips and two are fine, another 4.9 V DC, however the smaller 4558 IC is not responding (even when I shout at it for 5 minutes!). Could it be the chip is fried? Replaced with one I had lying around and still nowt. So, following the circuit diagram it looks like pin 4 goes via a resistor and to pin 2 of the voltage regulator. Ha, there must be the problemo. So with a small piece of insulated wire a new connection is being made, just as this is being typed.... will it be a success?

Bitumen

The newbie band are formed of Amanda and Jude and are truly quite explosive in their early experiments which are due to develop into something melting!

Check out Bitumen on myspace - here

Penniless Peggy Project *2

This project has taken me quite some time and has been a gradual process with four broken drill bits in the bin, but finally the 176 pegs are all fully drilled. With many thanks to John for the kind gift of drill bits.

The next step is to take the final 16 pegs, mark and drill 1 inch and 1/8 from the top


and 1 inch from the bottom.


Then comes the task of gently sanding away splinters of wood. I am is using a medium rough paper to do this. I will continue with this until all are neatly tidy and ready for threading together.


To be continued...

Tubes galore!

I love these tubes. Crates and crates for sale at the Junction28 rally in Alfreton. Mmmm. Lets look forward to a tube-tastic project in the future.