Mundane resistors out of stock, what's going on?

I fought hard to keep my copper phone line, but eventually I decided that the local Verizon folks were so aggressively clueless that I didn't trust them to maintain a central office battery anyway.

Plus of course COCO will be fibre or possibly microwave.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Though that sort of infrastructure is usually maintained and backed up much more diligently than anything at the user level or last mile. One of the reasons being that 911 and other important communications may run on it. It's a different group of techs for the higher level stuff. Though if your hunch above is correct, maybe not.

Oh indeed, but the ability to Macguyver a telephone call from a call box with a broken dial is /much/ more fun.

Yup, did that, got the brownie points.

What, as they say, could possibly go wrong? Answers on a ream of A4 paper.

which ham radio guys ??? Noticed the deadly silence on the allotted Freq. bands? They dont exist any more.

Sounds like valuable spectrum being wasted.

Am 24.05.2018 um 21:36 schrieb John Larkin:

The spectrum is tainted by power line communication that does not work reliably; the manufactures took the worst dirt that a device may produce without being collected by the authorities and declared that as the intentional transmission power. No doubt the Chinese obey that limit carefully.

And if you fly over a larger town, that what you hear in your Comm receiver is cable TV from countless ElCheapo coax cables, not the tower.

When I was a kid, I build a detector receiver, and the medium wave station Europawelle Saar come trough loud and clear on 1422 KHz, with 1.6 MegW from 15 miles away. That has been switched off, just like most everything else on MW. That part of the spectrum is worthless now, and even hams can get a license for MW.

Cheers, Gerhard DK4XP

When I was a sprout, I built a 1-transistor (germanium) super-regen, on a piece of floor tile, and it got the BBC and Radio Moscow. I was amazed.

I had a crystal set for local AM stations, and it was LOUD. Later I inherited a 5-tube hot-chassis Hallicrafters S-38, and I could get WWV and stuff.

RF continues to amaze me. We are still receiving low-power spacecraft past the orbit of Jupiter.

Am 25.05.2018 um 00:36 schrieb John Larkin:

There is a yahoo group "amateur-dsn", like deep space network. It is possible to receive interesting spacecraft.

regards, Gerhard

HUDs are fairly recent, IIRC. Lane departure warnings. Driving/parking assist. None of that requires telematics, though. Smart highways are the current "big thing".

Of course, you won't be interested in it because it takes more than five years to completely cycle the rolling stock.

A lot of automotive engineering is just that, engineering. It's not so much about making new gadgets but making gadgets reliable and cheap enough to be accepted in sufficient quantities to drive the cost curve down further.

Yeah, all three of you can talk for hours about your "rigs".

That's what I thought as well a while ago. Until I set the old Drake SSR-1 receiver on the fireplace mantle downstairs two weeks ago. Because of the ceiling I could pull its rod antenna only half way out but could easily listen to several groups talking on the 80m and 40m bands. Some was a bit tougher to understand but that's because they were from Mexico and talked Spanish.

Shortwave radio has largely been abandoned by radio stations but there are still the commie propaganda transmitters. No idea who listens to that anymore. To my surprise the tropical band around 5MHz is still quite active and no propaganda there.

So one of my next projects is to drill the wall and provide an outside antenna. In contrast to my old ham radio days I am now married so it has to have a good WAF which takes much more work. Can't just string a wire to the next tree.

But it all has a CE sticker. Chinese Engineering?

Probably another example of bureaucrat overreach from Brussels. Here in the US the AM band (MW in Germany) is completely full of transmitters. I was bottling beer downstairs this morning where the Drake receiver is and listened to an AM station.

Plus tons of gizmos. 60 micro controllers instead of "only" 40, and so on.

Then, during a thunderstorm about 60 miles after passing the sign "No services next 120mi" a little red light comes on and the engine quits.

IME the reliability of a motor vehicle is almost inverserly proportionate to the amount of electronics on it.

These features are only in the highest end autos. Hardly the cause of a large increase in capacitor sales.

Rick C.

The Ford Fiesta isn't exactly a highest end auto.

and even high end models sell a lot of units

I've seen a solution to this that always struck me as horrible: resistive ink printed direct onto the pcb. Tolerance must be real rough, but good enough for some jobs.

NT

Less chance of that happening today than other mechanical problems thirty years ago.

Utter nonsense. Car reliability has improved continuously for the past 100 years.

That's funny, the Ford web site doesn't indicate Active Park Assist is actually available on the Fiesta. I think you've been duped.

But in looking at the Ford web site I see there are a lot of things in new cars that wasn't in them a few years ago. I guess I haven't been in dealerships enough lately.

Rick C.

One example to consider might be backup cameras. They are now required in all passenger cars sold in the US. So not only does there have to be a camera, there needs to be a display for it.

This mandate was originally supposed to go into effect several years ago (2014?) but was postponed at the last minute, for whatever reason.

-- john, KE5FX

Nope:

Quote "Also included is Active Park Assist with brake interventions to prevent low-speed bumps when parking hands-free".

So on some models it's not even an option anymore but standard. Plus other stuff:

Quote "The ASA can now apply the brakes if drivers do not respond to system guidance and proximity warnings whilst performing forward and reverse manoeuvres".

The Fiesta is one of the smallest cars Ford makes, IIRC only the Ford Ka being smaller.

They call the recent ones "computers on wheel", precisely what I do not want to have as a car. My SUV is classic style, no gizmos, not even power locks or motorized windows. What ain't there can't break.