Retrotechtacular: Tube Amplifiers

It’s hard to beat this vintage reel for learning about how vacuum tube amplifiers work. It was put together by the US Army in 1963 (if we’re reading the MCMLXIII in the title slide correctly). If you have a basic understanding of electronics you’ll appreciate at least the first half of the video, but even...
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Bizarre Mini Amplifier + White Noise Generator?

[Jordi] made this awesome looking mini amplifier which has a rather unusual feature. He’s calling it the Bizarre Mini Amplifier because it also has a white noise generator built right into it! Bizarre right?Now, most people would just find a suitable amplifier and put it into a nice box, but not [Jordi]! He’s...
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Fubarino Contest: Morse Code Transmitter

The Fubarino Contest entries are slowing streaming in. Here’s the first one that we’re featuring, sent in by [Nathanael Wilson]. He dusted off a project from some time ago, which is just fine with us. It’s a Morse Code transmitter which he designed for use during a fox hunt (locating a hidden...
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Sniffing Data from Radio-Controlled Bus Stop Displays

A few weeks ago in Finland [Oona] discovered a radio data stream centered around 76KHz in a FM broadcast and she recently managed to decode it. This 16,000bps stream uses level-controlled minimum-shift keying (L-MSK) which detection can be quite tricky to implement. She therefore decoded the...
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Retrotechtacular: WWII Paraset Spy Radio Used by French Resistance

[Robert Sumption] a.k.a [W9RAS] takes on the daunting challenge of building a WWII spy radio called the Paraset as the topic of this week’s Retrotechtacular. It was originally a tube based CW (Morse code) transmitter/receiver used by the French underground to communicate with the Allies. Many of these radios...
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555 Based AM Radio Transmitter

Bust out that 555 timer and use it to build your own AM radio transmitter. The circuit that [Rtty21] is using only needs the timer chip, an NPN transistor, three caps, three resistors, and a potentiometer. It generates an amplitude modulation signal around the 600 kHz range which you will be able to pick...
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