Radio Shack Electronic Kits

with satellite phones in New Orleans throughout the ordeal. Additionally the military had plenty of their own infrastructure, which included satellite links.

For the average person, I think the best thing hams can do in disaster areas these days is to set up a bunch of PCs that ship out short e-mail messages over HF using Winlink or similiar. If the hams can manage to get a reasonably high speed link to a functional hilltop repeater or similar going, setting up a WiFi gateway would be the way to go.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about hams and emergency communications these days. The kind of things that emergency operations personnel expect in the way of communications these days tend to require a fair amount of fancy equipment and a lot of training. Investing that sort of funding into a "volunteer" group is not something that tends to go over very well anymore, unless it's a group such as, e.g., a volunteer fire department where there are strict duties and responsibilities spelled out and not just some "ad hoc" gathering of a bunch of guys at a pizza parlor every month.

---Joel

I'm convinced that 99% of what the average person does on the Internet would be completely legal if the data packets were going over ham frequencies as well. Reading your personal e-mail? AOK (just don't read your work e-mail!). Ordering a book on Amazon.Com? AOK (just as ordering a pizza through a phone patch is). Etc...

While you surely have a point, about a very remote possibility for any given locale, I actually have enough diesel fuel to last for a month of conservative use in winter, more for summer. I have a 26 year old Onan diesel generator that I restored.

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who connected a neon glow lamp straight to 120V.

Thankfully I didn't have access to oxy-acetylene until highschool welding class. I did find however that if you fill a welding glove with it and then hit it with the torch striker it makes quite an impressive boom and the glove launches.

like

ah then you already know, i wasn't smart enough to try container like a glove, that would have been entertaining

i am glad for alot of descisions at those times but not trying to fill one of the larger containers ranks high on the list

How can you be convinced of something that would be illegal? The ham frequencies are for use by people who hold an appropriate license.

Don

My favorite Christmas present this last year was a basic electronics kit like the old RS (or Heath) ones I had as a kid. It was presented to me by my nine year old daughter...in the hopes that I would build the projects with her, of course.

We spent an hour putting the kit together, built the first project; and then I turned her loose...thinking she would build the next most complicated one, and work her way up.

The next day when I came home, she presented me with a working example of the most complicated device in the project book. We had a ball subbing in different components, and then explaining to her why they made the circuit operate differently.

jak

If you put the tip in a dish of soap solution, you can get bubbles full of stoichiometric oxyacetylene mix, which make a pretty good _BANG_ when you light them.

This is better done outdoors than indoors.

Yeah, it's okay though. I was just pumped that she bought 'me' a toy which was actually for 'us' to play with. The fact that she took it and ran with it was a bonus. It shows the aptitude.

At nine, she's got all the choices in the world.

jak

Hi..

The operation of the hardware is restricted to those who hold an appropriate license. Who may or may not elect to share the usefulness of that equipment with whoever he chooses.

To suggest otherwise would be akin to laying claim that only those holding drivers licenses could be passengers in a car.

Or that only a properly licensed electrician could make use of or enjoy electrical equipment. In turn most likely meaning that you couldn't operate your shack being that you're most likely not a licensed electrician.

Ken

Hello,

Lucky you. That possibility isn't remote at all. Happened here about 15 years ago. And this is not a settlement behind the Klondike but we are

Regards, Joerg

Hello Joel,

And then that fancy equipment won't talk to the fancy equipment of the other agency. Happened, a lot. Keep it simple, that's what hams excel at. And it works.

They are quite a bit more organized than that.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Jak

That's the only way to get kids interested in electronics. Come to think of it, I must have been around her age. Maybe a year younger but that doesn't make much difference. It was a Philips kit that did it.

Later in case her interest persists just be honest with her about the career prospects inside the US. It ain't that stellar anymore for EEs unless they are very willing to relocate, even out of the country.

Regards, Joerg

Hi...

Guess I'm easily a generation or few ahead of you, so have a suggestion, if I may?

Get pictures - lots of 'em - of her working on it, some of you and her working together, and some of her demonstrating them to her Mom.

Make wonderful, wonderful memories for all of you, and maybe introduce her to photography at the same time.

Take care.

Ken

--Ya know, now that I think about it there's one other component to the puzzle that also seems to be lacking these days. When I was a kid and getting interested in these subjects there were science clubs that met on saturdays; I'd go there and meet like minded kids and fiddle on this and that, with some adult guiding our efforts and answering questions. Nowadays we try to do the same thing with the web and it ain't the same.. I believe that if you reeeeally want to get kid's attention with the fun that can be had with electronic kits (or any other kewl pasttime with a future) you've got to set up a social environment, too.

Hi Joseph,

The USRP motherboard is $550 and the "basic'" dautherboards are $75/ea, so a sub-$1K budget will work (althogh it doesn't leave much room for extra "goodies"). I realize that $1000 is a good chunk of change for most people, but it's very much within the realm of what hams spend anyway on computers, radios, etc., hence the suggestion that any youngster interested would have a decent chance of getting ahold of such equipment to play with.

At that low of a price, one is probably better off getting a good, used HF rig and hooking its output up to a soundcard. The main downside is that the bandwidth is only some 20kHz or thereabouts (far less than that required to digitize an FM radio station -- about 500kHz).

---Joel