Hello all..
I'm a newbie.. well sort of.. Now, don't flame me! LoL. I don't know a lot about electronics. A lot of stuff I have forgotten over the years about it. It seems I need to fill in the gaps in my information, as well as learn new things. Well, I'm almost 30 and it's been more than 10 years since I was in school. I live in the NW where a lot of very technical people live because we have a major internet and software company here, and a lot more.
I'm in to Shortwave (SW) listening and DX. I'm also in to Mediumwave (MW commonly called AM) DX. I am also going to be getting into Amateur (Ham) Radio. Posts to a Amateur Radio forum online were unsuccessful, so I came here to Sci.Elec.Basics. They flamed me for being inexperienced, and not to come to them till I had a radio liscence, well at least thats how they came across to me.
I know what certain electronics components look like, resistors, capacitors, chips, diodes, and the basic stuff, but knowing what they do and how they function in a circuit kind of elude me, or I have forgotten what I was taught by my dad, science teachers and
I'm sort of autistic (a neuropsych is underway at present), and have a hard time with short term memory recall, which makes studies hard on me. Hopefully I will learn more about what exactly I have as far as condition goes will help me narrow down what techniques are best for learning such advanced stuff.
I have the 1985 (Yes, I know it's old! 22 in fact) ARRL Handbook which has a lot of information, but it's over my head. I fear I'd need someone to lead me through what I should learn and what to skip. I figured not a lot of the theory behind this has changed a lot.
Naturally I like putting things together. Well, About 8 months ago I purchased a Fluke 8050A Digital Multimeter (DMM) at a thrift store for about $10. Neat little one. I downloaded the manual from Fluke, and well, still not have found that I understand how to use it. My grandfather had a VTVM, an old Simpson from the 40's. Interesting too. I got to use it to check AA and the like batteries. Beyond that knowledge here is limited.
I figured I would eventually build something out of the handbook, useful in my hobby, and also maybe some sort of test equipment for the bench. I don't want to do anything too complicated for a beginner yet something that would allow me to learn more along the way.
I like the idea of homebrew.. not really kit building.. but rolling your own kind of thing. Always has fascinated me.
Years ago, and I still do, because I managed to find a newer one used, I had a kind of Science Fair kit which allowed you to build electronics projects by inserting wires into springs on the top of the panel. I learned some things then.. somewhere around 1986.. but didn't manage to get a lot of the circuits I built in the book that came with it to work.
Well anyhow there ya have it, yet I'm lost as where to go on to next. I'm just tired of being flamed by a newbie.
Oh yeah, I've found recent interest in Software Defined Radio, a open-source project. Very neat.. Would love to try one some day.. maybe even build one. Theres a link to something called HPSDR floating around. Google and look at it sometime, it's interesting. It's High Performance SDR.
Greg