The beginning of my journey to my full licence, and a few bits of electronic salvaging in the shack (with some interesting discoveries)

As you will recall, at the back end of last year, I enrolled on Steve Hartley's Bath Based Advanced Distance Learning Course, which will take me to the Advanced licence all being well.

The course starts properly a week on Friday, so I hope to get some revision in before then, bearing in mind I have work and will be busy, I have already signed up for the system the course is using though have not had a chance to look at it properly, though that will be something I can do after work tonight (I start 40 minutes or so from time of writing).

I already have the book, a scientific calculator, and the RSGB radio communications handbook, I may benefit of course by getting some other books, I look forward to completing this course, and ultimately getting my full licence before the syllabus change in August of this year and also before the National Hamfest.

So the journey now begins, and I look forward to the challenges I will face, as I love a good challenge, keeps the mind active and healthy.

I also spent the last few days salvaging useful electronic components, I have an old power supply that I have spent years stripping down slowly, some of the electrolytic capacitors on it appear to have failed and show some bulging on the bottom which makes me think if they failed the time the supply itself went pop and a cloud of smoke emitted from it, the actual failed capacitor was removed a long time ago, the resistors, other capacitors and diodes seem fine.

I also cut the connectors off a load of old computer fans that I'd not likely be reinstalling into computers, which run happily of 13.8V DC (they are rated 12V DC and an extra 1.8V should not harm them considerably), the wires then stripped and tinned, and the fans retested on the bench supply, all seem happy and I do plan to put them into service at some point later on, preferably with a thermostatic controller to stop them from running all the time, I also salvaged components from my Internet Radio project including the speaker still inside the box, the amplifier is  still in situ, I removed its regulator and the 5V regulator I used to run the latter of the two Pis, this regulator is a 7805 and puts out around 4.98V DC when fed from a supply greater than it, I might use this as a USB outlet regulator and have a handy charge point in my shack, of course I do need to provide adequate filtering and tie the data lines to tell the phone what it can pull, though that information should be readily available on the Internet as a lot of phone chargers should now be reverse-engineered (the regulator is 1A though is fitted with a heatsink so may at a push work higher).

So tomorrow I may tinker a bit more if I have time and start extra revision on my Advanced tonight again if I have time.

73 de 2E0EIJ