Monthly Archives: January 2013

Saving the Adret Electronique CS201 Frequency Generator Synthesizer

Posted on January 31, 2013 by lui_gough

So I salvaged an Adret Electronique CS201, but I wasn’t able to test it owing to the fact that the power connection was made by an odd connector. One could always give in now and just throw it out or … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Salvage, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Salvage of the Day: Adret CS 201 Generator Synthesizer

Posted on January 31, 2013 by lui_gough

As the beginning of the year comes, it seems like everyone in EE at UNSW is cleaning out. One thing I managed to lug home today is an Adret Electronique CS 201 Generator Synthesizer. I’ve never heard of the brand … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Salvage, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

HLL2 Seoul Korea Radio Fax

Posted on January 31, 2013 by lui_gough

A new station for me – unfortunately, I can’t seem to find who is responsible for broadcasting this station, otherwise I’d try to claim a QSL from them too. This station broadcasts on centre frequencies: 3585 kHz 5857.5 kHz 7433.5 … Continue reading →

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KVM70 – 9982.5khz Great Propagation

Posted on January 30, 2013 by lui_gough

Oh my, what a difference a few days makes. So I tune in to one of my old-reliable stations – KVM70. Formerly, messy, terribly doppler spread affected station with moderate SNRs – tonight it’s coming through better than usual on … Continue reading →

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A demonstrative subset of my ticket collection …

Posted on January 30, 2013 by lui_gough

In conjunction with my previous article on Cityrail and EFTPOS machines, I have decided to post a subset of my vast ticket collection illustrating some of the characteristics of the tickets. While my collection can’t be said to be “old” … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Travel | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Cityrail Ticket Vending Machines and EFTPOS

Posted on January 30, 2013 by lui_gough

It’s been a while coming but Cityrail commuters would have noticed that many of their ticket vending machines are now equipped with EFTPOS terminals allowing for payment by chip-card. Both newer (yeah, they’re old hat) touch screen terminals and older … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Travel | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Nature is cruel …

Posted on January 29, 2013 by lui_gough

Last night, Sydney received a moderate storm with gale force gusts and some rain. This morning, I woke up to find this on the concrete just outside the sliding door … Nature is cruel. Seems like the tree in the … Continue reading →

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NMG NOAA New Orleans Radio Fax

Posted on January 28, 2013 by lui_gough

Now this is what you call DX – we’re receiving transmissions from New Orleans, Louisiana, USA! Sure, the quality can’t be expected to be good, but they’re “apparently” transmitting with 4kW – the same amount of power as Hawaii, but … Continue reading →

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KVM70 NOAA Honolulu, Hawaii Radio Fax

Posted on January 28, 2013 by lui_gough

Another good radiofax station for DXing is the KVM70 station at Honolulu, Hawaii run by NOAA. This station sends faxes almost continuously around the clock and at least one frequency is usually observable, although sometimes interfered with and or weak. … Continue reading →

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JJC/9VF Kyodo News Radio Fax

Posted on January 28, 2013 by lui_gough

As a case of last of the era, radio station JJC in Japan and 9VF in Singapore operated by Kyodo News in Japan is the last marine weather fax station which faxes daily news and navigational warnings. It is especially … Continue reading →

Posted in Radio | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

Bureau of Meterology Marine Weather Radio Anomalies

Posted on January 28, 2013 by lui_gough

The Australian Bureau of Meterology operates a marine weather radio service from two sites – one in Charleville, Queensland, and the other in Wiluna, Western Australia. The services operate as detailed in this webpage. At scheduled times, transmissions are made … Continue reading →

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Keeping Old Machines Going – Adapt-ing to the times …

Posted on January 28, 2013 by lui_gough

For retro-enthusiasts and hobbyists like myself, it can be difficult at times to keep old computers going. As the old AT form factor met its demise about a decade ago, parts for these machines can be hard to come by, … Continue reading →

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Site Update: Incorporated content from my travel blog

Posted on January 27, 2013 by lui_gough

In order to make it easier for me to administer and maintain my content, I’ve now moved the content from my travel blog (detailing my trip to Hong Kong and China early 2012) at http://goughlui.wordpress.com to this blog. Most of … Continue reading →

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Site Update: Tagging, Trackbacks, Related Posts

Posted on January 27, 2013 by lui_gough

Finally, I’ve gotten around to tagging posts with tags – should have done it from the start just so I can enable Related Posts plugin at the bottom of each post (when viewed individually). This way, it makes it easier … Continue reading →

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Seeedstudio DSONano v2

Posted on January 26, 2013 by lui_gough

This is probably my most favourite piece of test equipment for the past year. It’s a Seeedstudio DSONano v2. I got mine from Little Bird Electronics for about $100 a year ago. (Nevermind the scuff on the screen – that’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Working with the IC-R75 and IC-R20 – Handy Radio Software

Posted on January 26, 2013 by lui_gough

One of the perks of owning an IC-R75 “conventional” HF and IC-R20 handheld wide-band communications receivers is the ability for computer control. By connecting the RS-232 serial port on the rear of the IC-R75 to the computer, or the headphone/CI-V … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Radio | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Displaylink USB Adapters

Posted on January 25, 2013 by lui_gough

A while back, when USB based graphic adapters started entering the market, they were lousy. All of them couldn’t support any more than 1024×768 and had low colour depth and sluggish performance. It was a joke! In fact, it didn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Tech Flashback: Tektronix 1106 Oscilloscope Battery

Posted on January 25, 2013 by lui_gough

Those who are my direct friends on Facebook and have been following the comments on the BWD 141 Function Generator posts would have seen my friend Charith talk about this. Also thrown out in the same pile of trash in … Continue reading →

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Smartphone and Tablet Apps: A marketing wasteland

Posted on January 25, 2013 by lui_gough

Funnily enough, this post is prompted by a rather innocent thing – a fillet o’ fish burger from the well-recognized big M. Looks ordinary at first glance, but wait a minute – something’s different: With this “pattern”, and an app, … Continue reading →

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Workstation Bi-Annual Dusting

Posted on January 25, 2013 by lui_gough

Computers … you gotta take care of them like you take care of babies. It used to be a “monthly” defragging, regular “weekly” updating, and about every 6-months, you’d give them a dusting. Many people don’t seem to care until … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: BWD 141 Signal Generator

Posted on January 24, 2013 by lui_gough

Just the other day, roaming around UNSW’s Electrical Engineering building, I saw an old signal generator carelessly discarded into a pile of rubbish. Look at it – it is so pretty. It looks like an old radio! Nice large analog … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Review: Samsung Chromebook

Posted on January 24, 2013 by lui_gough

After the success of Google’s Android OS, and devices based upon it – it was time for me to take a bit of a venture into their other offerings – namely Chrome OS. The Samsung Chromebook represents the second generation … Continue reading →

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Welcome to the New Site

Posted on January 24, 2013 by lui_gough

Today marks the launch of my “new site” – this one not served by Raspberry Pi. My old site at gough.ath.cx was served by my Raspberry Pi, running apache2, php5 and mySQL. But over time, the site grew beyond the … Continue reading →

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Verifying the Frequency Accuracy of a Radio

Posted on January 19, 2013 by lui_gough

Earlier, I described how I managed to install and align an OXCO unit for the Icom IC-R75. Today, I wanted to make sure it was as accurate as it could be. Of course, I can’t do anything about drift – … Continue reading →

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Macro Photos – Trinkets, Heads, Chips and Disc BCAs

Posted on January 18, 2013 by lui_gough

[Due to the Pi choking on resizing large ass photos – everything will now be pre-resized to 1024×768 or thereabouts.] Now that I have a D3200 with its mega resolution, one thing worth trying is macro photography just to see … Continue reading →

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Allied Telesyn International MC103XL Fast Ethernet Fiber Media Converter

Posted on January 17, 2013 by lui_gough

One of my friends (William) got a bulk lot of old ex-Railcorp equipment, some of which he gave to me. Most of them were 10Mbit/s fibre with ST connectors, except these units which were 100Mbit/s with SC connectors. Most equipment … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Electronics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

D3200 Performance Test

Posted on January 17, 2013 by lui_gough

Okay, so my home ADSL2+ connection is pretty crap for hosting large images, but these should give you some idea of just how amazing 24.2MP is, and how amazing the D3200 can be when given some “Lightroom” love. All the … Continue reading →

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Canon, you’re fired! I’m a Nikon shooter now. D3200 Review

Posted on January 17, 2013 by lui_gough

It’s old news by now, but I’ve swapped over to the dark side. Formerly a Canon shooter, I have now turned 180 degrees, and I now shoot Nikon (and have shot Nikon for the past month). In this post, I’ll … Continue reading →

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Screwdrivers – Cheap ones aren’t always good enough

Posted on January 16, 2013 by lui_gough

Anyone who does a lot of repairing, inspecting and testing of things is bound to need a good toolset. Part of this might be a few special screwdrivers – not your average Philips head or flat-head, but the likes of … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Electronics, Radio | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Aftermarket GPS units for Geotagging on Nikon Cameras

Posted on January 16, 2013 by lui_gough

Geotagging is quite a nifty feature which has reached prominence as of late. The idea that your photos can have their location (and even heading) tagged into their EXIF data means that you’ll never “forget” where you took a particular … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Photography | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments