One of the things that was suggested to me was a quick way to find all of the major projects that have appeared on this blog. The easiest way for me to do this would be as you see it here: a single post, similar to hamfest pictures, that collects all of the projects from past posts. I’m planning on posting a permanent link to this page on the sidebar, so check back as more projects are added and completed.
Click on the title of each item to be taken to that project’s hub.
If you’ve been here before, you’ve probably noticed something different.
There’s a new theme set for the page.
Why? Well - as the world becomes more mobile, the site needs be mobile friendly. While I liked the simplicity of the previous theme, it didn’t react well to mobile and made viewing on your phone difficult. This template is reactive, and shows the site better to both desktop and mobile. I’ll make a few small changes, like the top image, but overall I like this. It’s clean, the colors are calm and pleasing, and it does react well to mobile. I’m still playing with some things, so there’s a few placeholders. I’m also going to try and update Flatpress to a newer version, but that’s going to be in a testing directory - you shouldn’t see any “the way this works” changes until I’m satisfied that the system is operational.
If you’re not seeing a new theme, ctrl+F5 should clear your cache and reload fresh.
I recently undertook a task to clean up and optimize images here on Projects, both for size and content. Some of the images were simply enormous, and some were showing stuff not relevant to the task at hand. You don’t need to have 5MB of image downloaded just to show you my bench with a single part on it. It can be much smaller. I also wanted to name things with a more universal convention.
That has been, more or less, completed. There’s a few images hanging out in hamfest folders that could be touched again, but for the most part they’re fine. And a couple I missed in QA…
Enter part 2.
Flatpress has a plugin that allows the pages to present a set of metadata that makes it more friendly towards searching. I’ve decided to (slowly) go through the pages here, add descriptions and keywords, and hopefully make the site easier to find what you’re looking for. This is probably going to take a while, but you shouldn’t see any interruptions on the front end of the site. I’m going to be working forwards from 2021, with 2026 already fully metadata’d.
Thank you for visiting Projects. I hope you’ve found something of interest here.
Progress:
2026: Done
2025: Done, and found some missing images.
2024: Done, and found some missing images.
2023: Done, and found some missing images.
2022: Done
2021: Done
This project is pretty much done. I’m going to set the search engines loose on the site in the coming weeks, hopefully more links to the site should show up and provide easier searching.
While still about 4 months away, there’s no better time to get your ticket as you can get the early boar price of $26, mailed to you at no extra charge. This is good for all three days - May 15th, 16th and 17th.
Ticket prices increase March 1st, so there’s no time like the present to get one if you plan on attending. Get your ticket here: https://hamvention.org/purchase-tickets/
It’s been a while since I’ve zipped up all the files in the document library, so it’s high time I do it again.
If you’d like a copy of everything I’ve collected for projects here, you can grab a copy of it from dropbox: https://www.dropbox. … ro3&st=djfaezpv&dl=0. The file is about 410MB, and is all of the files in a big .zip for easy extraction.
Used to be every technician had a set of them in their toolbox. They were a required purchase when I was a student in vocational electronics. My set generally vanished years ago, and Radio Shack quit selling them long before they became a piece of history.
Turns out you can still get that exact same set. It’s not in the ratshackpack, but you take what you can get.
So I guess I’ll be over here playing with my diddlestick.
I’m (more or less) done re-doing images here. I did find a couple that I messed up and missed, and a few that were deleted before I realized what I did (use that trash can!) but everything should be back in place. Thankfully, the Internet Archive had that all stored…feel free to submit pages there if you want!
What did I do?
1: Cropped a lot of images to show the relevant parts only. You don’t need to see a photo with 1/3 of it being the dirty mat on my desk.
2: Resized a lot of images so they are faster loading - a 2000×2000 image of a single resistor isn’t useful, and just wastes your time.
3: Moved a lot of things around on the back-end. I had images everywhere, but created folders for various projects and moved general images into appropriate folders.
4: Renamed most of the images so you know what they are if you download and store, and then come across the image some time later. The only things that didn’t get completely renamed were event photos since there’s a lot of those. They’re in their own folders, and that may be a project of it’s own.
Anything else?
There are a few document links still pointing towards my old OX drive. Those documents are still there for now, but you can find everything at the Wereboar Documents Library here: https://wereboar.com … r=wereboar-documents
I’m going to set a search on those old links and replace them as I find them, or simply point to the docs library in general.
edit: As best I can tell, all links to OX drive have been removed. I’ll leave the files there for a while, but probably will remove them no later than July of this year in case someone wants to grab them from an old link.
That all?
Yep, everything should be back in place, the pages should look better, and you should get image downloads a lot quicker. There may be some short delays as new thumbnails are generated for you, but I tried to take care of all those beforehand during preview setup.
As always, if you find anything broken, please hit the mastodon link at the bottom of each page and let me know. Thank you for visiting, and I hope you’ve found something of interest here.
When I started this blog, I didn’t quite understand the way the image function of flatpress worked - I’ve made several changes over the years but none of them were really satisfactory to me, or even standardized.
I’ve decided to start at the beginning and clean up images, resizing loose images (those not in a gallery) to more standard sizes, adjusting them so they aren’t all over the place in the posts, and generally providing a cleaner look. I’ll crop junk off of them so you just get the part that’s important, instead of a tiny part in a big image. I’m also moving images to more useful locations within the site, collecting posts together so they’re not in random folders.
This is going to be a long project, but older posts should start to look better for you - and perhaps even load just a tad quicker since they won’t be megabytes long. There may be some broken things while I move folders and optimize images, but they should resolve quickly.
So…in honor of the old web - here’s an under construction gif.
Project Status
2021 - Nothing to do.
2022 - Completed January 8th 2026.
2023 - Completed January 9th 2026.
2024 - Completed January 14th 2026.
2025 - Completed January 15th 2026.
2026 - Already using the new format.
Cleanup - Completed January 15th 2026.
QA - Completed January 15th 2026.
Cleanup will involve removing old folders and other leftovers, and QA will consist of going through the entire blog, making sure links all work, and correcting any document/image links that are not using the new format. It’s going a little quicker than I expected, I have some downtime and have been hitting it hard. Stay tuned for some more equipment posts, coming shortly.
In-between cleanup and QA, things may break. I’ll fix them as I see them.
January 15th 2026 - I think we’re done…if you see anything broken, please let me know on mastodon.
Galleries for late 2025 may break, but I’m trying to avoid doing that. If you hit a post and there’s nothing there but a “directory doesn’t exist” message, try again in a day or so - I should have everything image pointing to it’s proper location by the end of the week.I think I have these fixed.
I hope that 2025 was good to you, and I hope you found something here on projects that caught your interest. I have a number of devices lined up for the coming months, and there’s plenty of hamfests on the way.
This will be near to the last post of the year here on projects, and it’s something to browse while you’re waiting for the new year holiday to start. I found out earlier this year that you can reference galleries from different points within this blogging system, and thought it would be cool to have a year-end page with all of the stuff I saw at hamfests. So…here it is! The only ones that won’t be presented in that manner is the SCARF show in May and the Central PA hamfest - both of those because there were very few pictures. They’ll be links instead.
Without further ado, here is the stuff I saw this year at hamfests:
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The Sunday Creek ARF Hamfest, Shade Ohio.
A bunch of old-school test equipment.
That 1970s blue.
Still a lot of AM CB stuff.
A big, old, Heathkit power supply.
How big can you make a 5W CB?
I didn't buy a voltmeter this time!
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The Cuyahoga Falls ARC Hamfest, Cuyahoga Falls Ohio.
A nice AOR scanner with a serial control port.
A table full of audio related stuff.
BetaMax anyone?
A giant broadcast tube.
A small capacitor checker. This went home with me.
Some cool 1970s cases. I took a woodgrain special home.
Someone had a collection of early music video.
A lot of radios and tubes.
The club has a table of cheap stuff.
A coffin set. These have become cheap.
The inside of the coffin set.
Another coffin set.
Another coffin set. Would have got this if I had room.
I bet this thing can't hear WLW next to the tower.
A giant-size signal generator.
Some radios and one of those monitor scopes.
Self explanatory.
Some old Heath stuff. Some of it's not all that useful these days.
Another small Heath scope. Took this one home, it's in great shape.
Dad's homebrew projects.
Knobs. Need I say more?
I wonder who Lafayette was channeling here?
The last Heathkit of it's type.
Who didn't have one of these?
A stack of old meters.
An old mill controller.
How many of these were made?
A nice National radio.
Pulse generators.
Various rackmount equipment.
Surprise, radios!
Even more radios.
You guessed it, radios!
You'd think this was a radio show.
An “Electric Eye” science kit.
A nice old Solar cap checker with a meter instead of an eye.
I couldn't pass this up for $5.
I see you hiding in there.
A lot of different equipment.
Just some stuff. There was a calibrator here I took with me.
I wanted the triple stack, but we couldn't come to a bargain.
A television test jig and degaussing coil.
Some oddball one-off set made in the 1970s in the USA.
I love that they used a lot of color on these.
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The TUSCO Hamfest, New Philadelphia Ohio.
Some interesting equipment. Radio gear?
Lots of vidicon tubes. Lots and lots and lots!
The early 80s still live among us.
A dual band (lol!) Lafayette Radio.
I bet you never thought you'd see more radios.
AM/FM/8-Track with a cool honeycomb face.
Radio Shack ghosts haunt us.
A couple of old Tek (tube-type) scopes. Ok price.
A mini scope. That seems high priced.
Just stuff from the CFARC guys. I took the decade box.
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The Athens County ARA Hamfest, Athens Ohio.
CD-R…once a miracle, now just junque.
The camera doesn't do the chrome justice.
An interesting passthrough counter.
A desoldering iron from the tube socket era.
An all-in-one RF test station.
Some older test gear including a cap checker in the box.
An HP 200 series generator and an old tape player.
A “Portable” multimeter.
Once of those tube unit power supplies.
An old Sony reel-to-reel tape player.
A couple of scopes. Interesting, but not needed.
An interesting Sencore tube tester.
Radios and an overpriced PACO tube tester.
A bad shot of some old gear. Would have taken the rightmost one if it had been in better shape.
One of Trio's active panel meters.
One of Heathkit's interesting lunchbox tube testers.
Some radio tuning gear.
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The Dayton Hamvention, Xenia Ohio.
Friday:
I used to work for this toxic company.
Some big rackmount amps.
Somoe old Motorola comm analyzers.
A cool looking antenna controller.
A stack of audio gear.
A cool old blue B&H oscilloscope.
Lots of parts.
Stuff is just laid out on whatever.
It's chrome plated!
Lots of walkies.
A table full of consumer era radios.
One of those high-precision Regency counters.
Someone bought a box of CRTs and related materials.
A nice Heathkit decade box. Took this home.
A dirty Hallicrafters.
Not going to break this one.
Hard to believe it's only 1.7GB.
A giant dummy load. Dummy not included.
A nice Eico harmonic distortion analyzer. Went home as a project piece.
The accompanying Eico RF generator.
An Eico scope. Tempting, but I have too many scopes.
