Room with a view

Oh such a brisk windy day! The river was full-flow with waves breezing by our boat. Leigh and I have spent the afternoon painting, from pink to purple, the internal walls.


Delia has been nowhere but curled up on the woolen blanked inside.


Winter days on our life afloat are beginning.

QPR convention - Buildathon

Here I am at the Rishworth Radio Rally, in the process of the Buildathon in October (see earlier posting), constructing the 40mtr radio receiver ugly style.


As this was geared to beginners in construction, participants were given the circuit diagram as well as a scanned image of the finished circuit to copy from.


Under the guidance of the pro's i.e. John, my radio started to come together.


This is the finished article, wired up and tuned in!



Lovely stuff!

Pontoon on the river

Our boat is set alongside a pontoon which runs the length of several fields and has about 9 narrow boats floating along side it nose to nose. Fortunately we are sheltered from the power station by trees one side and face an expanse of low lying fields the other, ideal for watching the sun set in the evening.





We have an access point at the end of our boat but mind you it is rather slippery stepping down a muddy bank to it!

We are in the process of 'breaking in' the woodburner with small regular fires to allow the material to expand and set into place. Ooh it is so magic.

Bitumen Live at Chameleon

Bitumen at work



Jude strutting her stuff



and so it goes on...

Getting set

Bitumen are getting themselves ready for the event tonight.

8.30pm The Chameleon, map £5advance £6doors, 4 bands, aural delight.

Rishworth Radio Convention

The radio convention yesterday was wonderful! Along with all the usual suspects around the market tables there were folks from further afield. Namely Rex Harper who delivered a fascinating lecture about PICaxes and their programming, see http://qrpme.com/. This really does seem like a rich area for electronics.

I participated in the Buildathon on the day, which involved constructing a 40metre radio receiver, ugly style under the guidance of pro's! (This project is publicised in Practical Wireless this month) :)

The build took about 3.5 hours in total and was working by the end of the session, receiving morse! I was well pleased.

Here is how it looks:



As I was browsing the isles of the market stalls in the rally I encountered a couple who were selling a book on crystal radio projects. Now I don't know if I have told you yet, but this is how I started getting into radio's. At least after breaking one or two when circuit bending and making music. I had encountered this easy radio to build on the internet. It uses only a crystal rock or a diode to rectify the signal of the electrical current, a tuning capaciter, and plenty of wire for ground, antenna and a coil. Oh and to hear you need a crystal ear piece.

So getting back to the rally. I had spent too long quite frankly looking through this book on crystal radio projects when the female of the couple said "you can have it for a pound" "oh, i guess i should buy it, I've spent so long looking at it!" Then the male counterpart joined in with questions about my job and then I suddenly developed into a "worthy cause". Very kind I think. And so for about £8 I ended up with a bundle of crystal radio parts to construct together and develop and share those skills.

So here is the crystal part.


This rock of galena is the detector. Using a piece of wire known as a "cat's whisker" to touch points on the crystal it is possible to pick up a radio signal.

Here is a suitable capacitor which is used to tune into the frequency of radio stations, this works along with the coil and crystal. Notice the fins that are carefully engineered not to touch each other as you turn the nob.


Then came these beauties


A real set of vintage headphones, 2000ohms (i think) that'll work wonders with a crystal set I am planning on building. They have a lovely leather strap and are in good working condition. The cord is fine for a vintage set of cans. Mmmm...


Once I am firmly on water I can get cracking with this project at my workstation. At the moment boxes lie upon boxes in the flat and there is no workstation to be seen - oh dear!