CB and Ham Radio Techs Love Their Bird Wattmeters

[joeqsmith]

... Also a lot of them seem to be stuck in terms of technology, can't possible use simulation, simulation is worthless! ...

I tend to agree with the hams. There really is no need to simulate plugging your purchased radio into the wall outlet or attaching your purchased antenna.  Based on the hams that have written me,  it's a good thing too.  As long as there is money to be made, amateur radio will stick around.   The government may need to drop the license to drive members and once combined with the CB market, I expect sales will do fine.  The CB group may make better use of some of the bands.     

Let's turn back the hands of time to 1961 and see what Paul W. Sturm K4ILP has to say on the matter.

[joeqsmith]

I definitely want to make a red warning label to put next to the RF input.

Warning: Must use attenuator
if input exceeds +13 dBm (20 mW)

Not that people would actually read it ... but at least it absolves me of any blame.

My own experience seems to suggest the same.  Once in a while someone may read it, but then they will not understand it.   Unless you are selective about who receives your meter, it may suffer the same fate as the hams connecting their NanoVNAs directly to their radios only to then post how they can't calibrate them.   

[vk6zgo]

You've heard of water boarding right? It's a method to break people and get them to tell you what you want to know. They say it's torture. Well I can beat that easily. Just set them down in front of a 2m radio and make them listen and talk to the local hams here for a week. Before a week is up they'll be begging for the radio to be turned off and they'll tell you anything you want to know. Plus, no one can say it's official torture because it's ham radio! 

 

Funny thing how different things can be.
Where I live, they would get bored, waiting for someone to come up & say something.
There may be a few people on once or twice, for about 5-10 minutes during the day, punctuated by long periods of "The Sounds of Silence"!

After reading some earlier comments, I had a listen on both 80m & 2m, this morning.
On the former, a bit of a Net was in progress------- they called the roll, talked for a while, with one ham calling in from the USA via an AllStar link.
No profanity, no bigotry, no swear words!---what happened!

Nothing on the usual repeater, so I continued on 80m, & after a while, they all took their leave, with some meeting up for lunch later.
After a bit more of a listen around on 2m, I found a conversation on a different repeater, which finished after a few minutes, then back to silence!

[xrunner]

i guess it's time for this gem -

[vk6zgo]

i guess it's time for this gem -

Ohhh--Burt, the "one trick pony"!
He's been plying that same shtick for years!

[metrologist]

I tend to agree with the hams. There really is no need to simulate plugging your purchased radio into the wall outlet or attaching your purchased antenna.  Based on the hams that have written me,  it's a good thing too.  As long as there is money to be made, amateur radio will stick around.   The government may need to drop the license to drive members and once combined with the CB market, I expect sales will do fine.  The CB group may make better use of some of the bands.     

The bands will be filled with K1MAN style ops. Get on the Superbowl and imagine what could become...

[vk6zgo]

... Also a lot of them seem to be stuck in terms of technology, can't possible use simulation, simulation is worthless! ...

I tend to agree with the hams. There really is no need to simulate plugging your purchased radio into the wall outlet

Don't tell them that! ---a very small cohort will do just that, & let the magic smoke out in a big way.

That said, I do have three direct "plug into the Mains" radios:
One dead Icom IC251A, a "dead-ish"  IC575A, & a Kenwood R1000 Receiver---all the rest need 13.5V or so DC.

or attaching your purchased antenna.

In my experience, "purchased" antennas need as much "farting around" as home made ones, so, unless I can get old ones at Hamfests, I leave them alone.
Most suburban homes are far from ideal locations for antennas, so, unless that is really your major interest, simulating antennas is pretty much a waste of time.

I was very happy with the "glorified clothesline" on 20m I slapped together one afternoon, made from car stereo "speaker wire" from the local "El Cheapo" shop, tuned by listening for maximum noise with a general coverage receiver, shortening enough to bring the noise into the ham band, then finally tweaking with an old "CB" type SWR meter from the 1970s.
It worked for years, much longer than I anticipated.

  Based on the hams that have written me,  it's a good thing too.  As long as there is money to be made, amateur radio will stick around.   The government may need to drop the license to drive members and once combined with the CB market, I expect sales will do fine.  The CB group may make better use of some of the bands.

Again, the vast difference in Countries ------in Oz, HF CB is now all but unknown.

If you listen assiduously for a week or so, you may hear a few diehard dinosaurs chatting on CH35 upper, amongst a lot of "clear air", or, way down in the noise, maybe some illicit taxi drivers in SE Asia .

UHF CB on around 477MHz FM was a great success over time, once they were allowed to have repeaters, killing HF "stone dead" for most of the things CB is actually useful for, but even that has become a victim of the ubiquitous "smart phone".

These days, apart from a handful of "swearing bears" on one of the local repeaters, a few truckdrivers, & retirees travelling in campervans, it is nearly as dead as 11m.

Let's turn back the hands of time to 1961 and see what Paul W. Sturm K4ILP has to say on the matter.

[xrunner]

Regarding 3D printing raised letters -

(If you already know this then I'll post this for others following along)

Yes it's a simple matter to put letters on a model using Fusion 360 (see below). However, there's a fiddly issue with how it gets printed I'll have to address. The example below I could print no problems, because one side can lay flat on the print bed, and the raised letters go up and don't cause a problem. However my power meter front case panel already has raised "pins" on the back side that hold the OLED display. The side of the panel exposed to the user gets printed flat on the bed and the surface will look very nice.

If on my model I add raised parts to the front side as well - the majority of the flat plane of the panel won't be able to lay perfectly flat on the print bed. Depending on which side is down, only the beginning of the pins, or the beginning of the lettering, will start off on the print surface. Now, it is possible to still print it, but one side or the other would have to have a support structure underneath, which is an option available when the model is sliced.

It wouldn't be acceptable for the part that had the supports to be the front view because I know from experience the support structure would leave imperfections after it's removed and the flat surface won't look that great. So it would have to be on the back part where the pins are. I will try a short test first because I'm not that confident the letters will look good enough to pass strict quality control. Even if they are, I might want to accent the raised text with a dark paint on top.

Yea I know what you're going to say "Make it happen". 

[xrunner]

I printed a test panel which was only 1 mm thick so it would finish faster (yet by adding the support structure it still ends up taking longer than the original). As you can see, the back surface quality isn't good at all, because it was printed on top of the support structure. The front is better but still can't match the quality where the opposite side was printed right on the glass bed. Yes there is a process called "ironing" which can be selected in the slicer, but I don't think it will be what I want.

As far as the lettering I'd want to make it larger because it already has little flaws but larger text would just look "toyish". Adding letters and the support structure and having the correct panel thickness I want (2.5 mm) makes this take over 3 hours when the basic part that looks better takes less than 1 hour.

Also, as I said, I have to add a warning label anyway so I'm not getting away from labels. So no, I don't think I'll use that technique on this project. I'll use black on clear label tape, but for other projects the raised letters might be an option. Another type of option might be "skeletonized" lettering where it's just holes but then you run into issues with letters like "A" and "P" among others.

I need to finish both panels now and work on my RF shielding process for them.

[joeqsmith]

Why would it need a reset switch? 

[xrunner]

Why would it need a reset switch?

To reset it ... 

Well Joe you know those CBers that test killowatt radios? It's possible that the microcontroller might get zapped with stray RF and hang up. So you can reset it from the front.

(You could pull the power and do the same thing but then I'd only have two buttons  )

[joeqsmith]

Again, the vast difference in Countries ------in Oz, HF CB is now all but unknown.

If you listen assiduously for a week or so, you may hear a few diehard dinosaurs chatting on CH35 upper, amongst a lot of "clear air", or, way down in the noise, maybe some illicit taxi drivers in SE Asia .

Last time I listened to CBers they were on the 80M band.  I'm not surprised by your comment.  Cell phones are far more popular and you gain the internet.  If you want to talk to multiple people, we have apps for that...

[joeqsmith]

Why would it need a reset switch?

To reset it ... 

Well Joe you know those CBers that test killowatt radios? It's possible that the microcontroller might get zapped with stray RF and hang up. So you can reset it from the front.

(You could pull the power and do the same thing but then I'd only have two buttons  )

Don't you have a watchdog?

[joeqsmith]

I had seen a video of someone resetting a gas pump but wasn't able to find it.  You could see it go through the boot process.    Instead here are a couple others but I doubt these are actual resets..

[xrunner]

Don't you have a watchdog?

No, I have watchcats over here.

And he's always watching me ...

[xrunner]

I had seen a video of someone resetting a gas pump but wasn't able to find it.  You could see it go through the boot process.    Instead here are a couple others but I doubt these are actual resets..

Oh dear ... reminds of what a redneck says right before they try a stupid stunt -

"Hold my beer and watch this ..."

Too bad the pump didn't blow up he'd win a Darwin award hands-down

Yea that's why I put the reset switch on the front. In case it (the processor) is hit with strong broad band emissions and doesn't come back on.

"Hey junior I'm gunna hit this liddle RF power meter my friend made with RF watch what it does!"

This is why I'm working on RF sheilding for it today! 

[joeqsmith]

Imagine if I told you you had to pull over and yank your car's battery cable because the micro needed to be reset.      Outside of idiots and their USB  bus, I have not seen too many devices that would hang.   I did however catch one of my designs on fire once while running RF tests on it.      

[bd139]

I have to actually pull over and restart my car when the Bluetooth shits itself.  Fortunately only at ignition level. This happens every 6 months or so 

[xrunner]

Imagine if I told you you had to pull over and yank your car's battery cable because the micro needed to be reset.      Outside of idiots and their USB  bus, I have not seen too many devices that would hang.   I did however catch one of my designs on fire once while running RF tests on it.      

Well I haven't seen too many modern vehicles designed with Arduino main boards either. 

Seriously, I can hang my Spectrum cable box on a few channels when transmitting on certain frequencies in the ham bands, never over 100W. I can't open the Spectrum box because it's sealed, but I can see into it through vents. There is some shielding over certain parts but I'm sure they didn't expect it to be near field to ham radio transmitters. If the designers were to discuss it with me they'd say "Well, don't transmit while watching TV!

 

[joeqsmith]

I have a car that when started the message center would display brake failure.  Rather than fix the firmware, they actually have a note in the manual about restarting and if it clears, it's not a problem.  They did eventually fix the firmware.  That's some shit code.  Would like to know the inside story how shit like this would ever make it to production....  Then again....  I think I know.   

[joeqsmith]

I looked at an automotive meter that would reset if you looked at it the wrong way.   After some reverse engineering I made a small change to the design.   Tests shown here would normally knock it for a loop.   

[xrunner]

What did you mod to fix it?

[joeqsmith]

That's been a long time ago but from what I remember the manufacture of one of the ICs had added a small bypass cap that was missed in the design.  Just poor design practice. 

[bd139]

I have a car that when started the message center would display brake failure.  Rather than fix the firmware, they actually have a note in the manual about restarting and if it clears, it's not a problem.  They did eventually fix the firmware.  That's some shit code.  Would like to know the inside story how shit like this would ever make it to production....  Then again....  I think I know.   

The software that’s in that car was put together by people with at least two orders of magnitude more competence than the ones I deal with on a daily basis. I watch the world burn a little bit more every day.

[xrunner]

I have a car that when started the message center would display brake failure.  Rather than fix the firmware, they actually have a note in the manual about restarting and if it clears, it's not a problem.  They did eventually fix the firmware.  That's some shit code.  Would like to know the inside story how shit like this would ever make it to production....  Then again....  I think I know.   

The software that’s in that car was put together by people with at least two orders of magnitude more competence than the ones I deal with on a daily basis. I watch the world burn a little bit more every day.

True story just happened yesterday. A guy comes around once a year and his business is re-painting the house numbers on the curb if you want to pay him. I signed up and yesterday for a green background with white letters.

He came by and painted the green background rectangle and left to do other houses while that dried. He comes back in a few hours and finishes by painting the house number, which is written on the order paper. I saw him outside and went ahead and paid him for the job and went back inside. I didn't feel I needed to supervise him painting the number.

After a while I went out to get my mail and looked at the job. He'd painted the wrong number - off by 1 digit. I saw him up the street and told him and he came back and fixed it. I can't even trust a person to do a simple thing like that anymore.

I can't imagine trying to get good people for any type of complicated project. Frankly it would scare the hell out of me worrying about the job they were doing unless I already knew them.