HAM’S LIFE

The rapid developing electronics field has a very close association with ham radio and I refer to other technologies to illustrate that the expediential advance in technology covers much more then just electronics.  It may be a stretch in the mind of some to link this with ham radio but in my thinking there is a connection.  

Saturday night I heard the last part of a radio talk show that apparently had a guest earlier in the show.  The guest, it would seem as I followed the call in discussion, believed that modern electronic technology came as result of a UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico in July of 1947.  Now I can not prove nor disprove if a UFO crashed in Roswell or if any technology was learned from that craft if it did crash but I do not believe we need UFO conspiracy theories to understand modern technology advancements.

The Industrial Revolution is considered to have started around 1760.  Up to that time things did not change much.  When people wanted to go somewhere by land they walked, rode a beast of burden, or rode in some kind of wagon or cart drawn by such animals.  If they wanted to go by water they had to row or be wind driven.   Harnessed steam power change that.

The world started changing.  The change, sense that time, has continued to change at an accelerated rate.  Swifter means of transportation and greater productivity of factories prompted the need for faster and more efficient communications.

The word telegraph comes from Greek and means distant writing.  Though a few telegraph devices using electricity were developed prior to Samuel Morse’s telegraph but they died while Mr. Morse’s telegraph took root and grew.  The telegraph started the age of electronic communications in 1837. 

Just 40 years after Mr. Morse showed the world how to put messages on wire and send them long distances in a flash Alexander Graham Bell showed the world how to put the human voice on wire and send it over long distances. 

While the world of electronic communication was growing during 1800’s and early 1900’s other fields of technology also grew.  Accelerated development was happening in all fields Firearms, Electric lights, Internal Combustion engines, photography, and the list could go on. 

Nikola Tesla demonstrated a wireless telegraph in St. Louis, MO in 1893 but Guglielmo (Italian for William) Marconi made it to the patent office first with an economical and effective system that communicated more then just a few meters away.  It was 60 years (1837 to 1897) from when the first effective wire telegraph was patented until the first effective wireless telegraph was patented and it was 40 years from when the telegraph was invented until the telephone was invented but it was only 2 years from when the wireless telegraph was demonstrated until the wireless telephone was demonstrated.  1899 A. Fredrick Collins successfully made a voice transmission.

In 1906 Lee De Forest placed a grid in the vacuum diode and made it a triode he called an Audion.  The Audion had a little gain but it was not until about 1912   triodes with sufficient gain make an oscillator was able to be produced.  The vacuum tube was further developed.  It had more grids added and it was reduced in size.  Using the vacuum tube allowed transmitters to operate with a continuous wave (CW) on a specified frequency rather then the parasitic signal spread over a band.  Receivers could then use active devices rather then the passive units of prior days.    The little glowing marvel made it so that almost every home in the United States had at least one radio receiver in it by 1930.

In 1939 RCA released the AC/DC radio using the All American Five vacuum tubes and radios started appearing in several rooms in the home.  They could fit in packages small enough to sit on a book shelf, kitchen counter, or bed side night stand.  Soon many companies started selling these efficient, attractive, small, inexpensive, and very dangerous radios.  Compact battery operated vacuum tube radios were also being produced.  Automobiles with radios started showing up just after 1930.

By 1947 Television antennas were sprouting on the roofs of houses all across the United States. 

In 1925 Julius Edgar Liliendfield filed the first patent for a transistor in Canada.  The new transistor was very similar in operation to a Field Effect Transistor.  Because Mr. Liliendfield did not publish any research and his patent did not cite any examples of the device being constructed Oskar Heil was able to patent a similar device in 1934.

Though Bell Laboratories was not able to patent a working bipolar transistor prior to December of 1947 they had been working on the concept of a solid state replacement for the vacuum tube for several years before 1947.

Now all of this was prior to the events that happened in Roswell in July of 1947.

Looking at the technological developments that took place from the beginning of the Industrial Revelation until 1947 and noticing the accelerating advances in that technology and comparing it to the rate of acceleration sense 1947 personally I would say we are just about on target where we should be without the need of some extra-terrestrials technology input.     

To do the job right a person needs right tools and that adage is just as true with soldering as it is with any other skilled effort. 

The first tool to consider is the most obvious the soldering iron.  The right iron is a subject not easily covered in a short post as this but a few simple guide lines may help. 

If you are not one of those few people to whom money is no object cost is one factor that must be considered.  There are simple soldering pencils which can be purchased for a few dollars (or which ever currency you might be using) and there are complex solder stations which can be purchased for several hundred dollars.

For most amateur radio soldering a small 15 to 30 watt pencil iron will work well.  A changeable tip with an assortment of tips is highly recommended because it allows changing the size and shape of the tip for different projects; it will also allow the tip to be replaced when the tip is dissolved beyond usefulness by the liquid solder.  (Note 1.)  The plug should have a ground wire which grounds the barrel and tip.  Modern electrostatic sensitive components can be damaged by ungrounded tips. 

A variable temperature solder station makes a very fine accessory to any ham shack.  These solder stations can be a little expensive if you are only going to use it a few times a year but if you plan to become an avid builder a good station can be purchased for about $100.  There other solder stations then Weller made but the Weller is probably the most popular. (Note 2)

Battery operated and propane heated irons work well for field work when AC power is not available but I do not recommend them for in shop bench work.  One reason for this is because they don’t have grounded tips. 

Solder guns are excellent tools to use where a lot of heat is needed.  Weller makes very good solder guns.

A stand for the soldering iron is another tool that needs to be considered.  Irons left just laying on the bench are inviting disaster.   Most solder stations come with holders but if you use an iron or a station that does not have one it will only take one time of placing your hand or arm on a hot iron or maybe accidently knocking the iron off the bench onto your lap to convince you that you should have purchased  a holder. 

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness” is not a quote from the Bible but cleanliness is good health practice.  It is also a good soldering practice.  I am not talking about washing your hands before soldering though washing after soldering is a good practice because 40% of the most commonly used solder is lead.  I am talking about a clean surface where solder is to be applied and a clean tip on the instrument being used to heat that surface.  The best thing for cleaning hands is water with soap and the best thing for cleaning soldering iron tips is water without soap in a sponge.  It is best to purchase one designed for this purpose and not try to use a general purpose sponge.  The sponge is to be damp and the tip of the iron is to be rubbed across it just before using. 

An ink eraser for cleaning surfaces to be soldered along with an acid brush (Note 3) to remove the bits of eraser may prove to be desirable.  Liquid rosin flux to be applied after the surface to be soldered is cleaned along with denatured or isopropyl alcohol (not rubbing alcohol) to be used with an acid brush to clean the flux after the soldering is completed are a few other helpful tools to add to your arsenal of soldering tools.

If soldering static sensitive items the bench should be properly attired with a grounded antistatic pad and a grounded wrist bands properly worn by all handling these components is needed. 

An appropriate pair of pliers for cutting leads or wires wills most likely be needed.  Hemostats also come in handy at times.

Finally the last item which I will mention is by far not the least.  Eye protection is a must when soldering.  A pair of safety glasses is a very practical investment before soldering.  Hot solder in your eye will not make your day.   

Notes:

1.  Solder in the liquid state acts as a solvent on metals.  That is the quality   that lets it “wet” the surface so when it solidifies it adheres.    The iron tip must also be able to become “wet” with the liquid solder if it is to function properly.

2.  I personally I don’t know why the Weller solder stations are so popular.  The Weller works when it is working.  I have used more of these stations then I can count and almost every one I have used developed an intermittent problem with the plug and socked that connects the cord from the iron to the station.  It looks like the station is operating but when you try to use it the tip is at room temperature. 

3.   The use of an acid brush is in no way to infer that acid flux is to be used in electronic soldering.  It is just a brush that is of a convenient texture for the project and inexpensive.

I delete about 100 comments for each one I accept because most of the comments are just to advertise their site and has nothing to do with ham radio.  If you read through the comments you will see that many of the comments I have accepted are probably for the purpose of drawing people to a site unrelated to ham radio but at least the comment had some substance.  There are also a lot of good comments.

Today as I was monitoring the comments I found one by Mike G which really attracted my attention.  The comment can be found on my post “THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAM RADIO AND CB” (http://hamslife.com/?p=24).  Mike’s comment or actually questions were: “Were HAM radios used by the French resistance during WWII? Have they been successfully used in modern times, in countries where tyrannical gov’ts have taken over? How can a HAM radio be utilized successfully today if the USA were to collapse?”

The subject Mike brings up deserves, in my estimation, a lot more then just a simple response in the comment section.  Actually the area of ham radio and government subversion could fill a book but I won’t be writing a book here. 

During WWII there were commercially built ham radios on the market but nothing like the great number of units available today.  Many of the ham radios were home brew.  While I am sure many of these radios were converted to underground use by the French and other resistance groups and operated by licensed ham radio operators it needs to be understood that a radio station is only a ham radio when it is operated by a legally licensed amateur radio operator on an amateur radio frequency using amateur radio call signs.  If a licensed amateur radio operator uses his ham station under an encrypted call sign (call sign to reveal station identity to the station being called while concealing the station identity from others) to pass subversive information it technically is not a ham radio station at that time.  It may sound like I am splitting hairs but that is a hair that I believe needs to be split.

Radio transmitters and receivers which were constructed for amateur radio use have been used by many for good and bad.  Resistance groups such as the French Resistance have used them to combat tyranny and rebel armies have used them to provide communications.  Drug and other smugglers have used them to pass information.  Ham radios and ham operators have provided the world with instantly available operators and equipment to meet specific communications needs outside the normal amateur operations. 

The potential use of ham radio in event of a government collapse whether USA or another is certainly a difficult question to answer.  There was a television program series that illustrated this at least to some extent.  The program was “Jericho” and it can now be found on U Tube.  Jericho gave the title of that week’s program in Morse code. 

If the government collapse is do to an overthrow where nuclear weapons are used, such as in Jericho, most modern ham radios will become worthless.  Nuclear explosions produce huge EMF (Electro Magnetic Force) fields which will destroy all solid state devices.  Only those hams with vacuum tube equipment would still have working radios in event of a high level nuclear explosion.  Finding power to run these radios might prove to be interesting because most power plants use solid state devices in their monitoring equipment and the loss of these devices would cause a shutdown. 

I do believe that EMF is a serious threat to our world today. Thus we need to organize a group of ham radio operators with vacuum tube radios and means of providing power (generators must not have solid state devices necessary for operation) for those radios.  Transportation and communications are so dependant of the use of solid state equipment that in event of such an attack we would have our life line cut off and the organization I just described could be the saving force.  

It is a scary thought when you realize our very existence has become dependant on a very fragile silicone thread. With the right equipment  and organization we, ham radio operators, could become the safety line to catch our society incase someone should cut that thread with a nuclear weapon.