Total posts : 45366
Thank you for your wonderful report on your
remote Doppler radar setup. I have read it
several times, and plan to look at it some more.
I know a lot of hams and radio people. A lot of
these people love science and venture into
projects that go beyond radio. One ham friend
built an earthquake detector. Rumor has it, that
the detector was so sensitive, he was able to tell
when a shuttle was being launched in Florida,
which is a long way from Connecticut.
There was one ham who enjoyed listening to radio
emissions from Jupiter, something I have always
wanted to do. (But I have never gotten around to it.)
Some hams have followed spacecraft partway to Mars
and I think somebody somewhere achieved Venus-Bounce.
I know a guy who used a gigantic IR LED array to make
contacts with other IR enthusiasts. They bounced the
IR emissions off of a large tall building in a nearby city
that they could both see from their locations. They also
used cloud-bounce.
Some people build robots. Others build rockets that use
Mentos mints and Diet Coke for fuel. One guy even mounted
a homemade jet engine on a super market shopping cart.
When the engine was operating, the sides of it glowed the
color red from the heat.
Still, you are the first person I know of that built a real radar
unit and then sent an RF link back to your house.
Wow! That’s really something! You obviously have a great
deal of knowlege.
In this solar powered Part 15 repeater, I am really interested
in the solar power aspect of the thing and how that works.
Also, it is a very easy thing to put together, unlike some of
the other projects I am slowly working on. And if I ever
get to working with 900 MHz modules, I will have some
questions for you.
I thought of one more funny project. When a local radio
buddy and I were kids, Radio Shack made something called
A “Big Ear.” It was just a microphone inside of a big
plastic parabolic dish on a tripod. It had an audio amplifier
in it with headphones, and theoretically, you were supposed
to be able to hear people talking far away, and that sort of
thing. My friend put it in his front yard, and ran an audio
cable to his stereo system in the cellar. Turn up the volume
on the stereo,
and (he claims this, but I don’t remember it) we could hear
the guy in his yard 300 feet away telling his dog to – well,
we all know what dogs do outside. But we had to be careful.
One day neither of us were near the volume control on the
stereo. A car with a bad muffler came down the street, and
we practically got blasted out of the room!
Thanks Neil for the great writeup.
Best Wishes,
Bruce, MICRO1690/1700
