Projects from the bottom drawer

2026
Jan
23

Some changes here at projects, Part 2.

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.

Posted by bryan in 07:21:24 in General
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2026
Jan
19

The Dayton Hamvention is coming up soon.

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/

See you there!

Posted by bryan in 20:29:26 in General, Events
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2026
Jan
16

The Wereboar Documents Archive zip for January, 2026.

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.

image courtesy of freepik

Posted by bryan in 06:34:03 in General, Tech, Junk
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2026
Jan
15

Remember these?

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.

Posted by bryan in 15:10:41 in General
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2026
Jan
15

Some changes here at projects - We’re (mostly) finished.

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.

Posted by bryan in 13:55:14 in General
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2026
Jan
7

Some changes here at projects.

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.

Posted by bryan in 14:01:23 in General
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2025
Dec
31

The last post of 2025.

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.

Have a Happy New Year, and I’ll see you in 2026.

Posted by bryan in 20:31:24 in General
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2025
Dec
30

The 2025 hamfest wrap-up and (almost) last post of the year.

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:
.

The Sunday Creek ARF Hamfest, Shade Ohio.

The Cuyahoga Falls ARC Hamfest, Cuyahoga Falls Ohio.

A nice AOR scanner with a serial control port.

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.

Another coffin set. Would have got this if I had room.

I bet this thing can't hear WLW next to the tower.

Some radios and one of those monitor scopes.

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.

I wonder who Lafayette was channeling here?

A nice old Solar cap checker with a meter instead of an eye.

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.

The TUSCO Hamfest, New Philadelphia Ohio.

Lots of vidicon tubes. Lots and lots and lots!

I bet you never thought you'd see more radios.

AM/FM/8-Track with a cool honeycomb face.

A couple of old Tek (tube-type) scopes. Ok price.

Just stuff from the CFARC guys. I took the decade box.

The Athens County ARA Hamfest, Athens Ohio.

The camera doesn't do the chrome justice.

A desoldering iron from the tube socket era.

Some older test gear including a cap checker in the box.

An HP 200 series generator and an old tape player.

A couple of scopes. Interesting, but not needed.

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 Heathkit's interesting lunchbox tube testers.

The Dayton Hamvention, Xenia Ohio.

Friday:

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 nice Eico harmonic distortion analyzer. Went home as a project piece.

An Eico scope. Tempting, but I have too many scopes.

A Rat Shack project counter for chickenband.

We all wanted one of these back in the day.

Bet you never thought you'd see radios here.

Watkins-Johnson stuff. Getting rare now, it's ancient.

That had to be an interesting trip in 1961.

An unusual scanner radio. Almost bought it, but why.

An unusual example of a signal tracer. Came home with me.

The once desirable radio. Nothing to listen to these days.

Some sort of ancient satellite receiver.

A weird scope, meant for radio broadcast.

A device to play back the sound from a film.

An ancient and wonderful IBM memory tube.

For all of your desktop interrogation needs.

An ancient dial it in spectrum analyzer.

The raw board was made in Coshocton, Ohio.

The worst selling computer you'll see the most of.

A really odd voltmeter. How does it work?

Saturday:

Lots of chickenband (CB) radios, not as many as previous years.

Lots of CRT testers showed up this year.

Random stacks of equipment. Random show-goer not for sale.

I didn't know GenRad made a frequency meter like this.

Lots of siggens. Some were a bit pricey.

Not a Bond movie, but a gold-plated protoboard.

It has the high sensitivities. No WiFis or GeeBees included.

One of many National receivers that showed up…

This would explode some places I've worked.

A family member had one of these years ago.

The prices on the S-38C units went way up.

Not sure how this is supposed to be profitable, but hey.

A Heath speaker. Poor cabinet condition.

One of many tube testers at high prices.

These really need shorting bars on them.

The Scioto Valley ARC, Piketon Ohio.

https://wereboar.com … -2025-svarc-hamfest/

Breezeshooters Hamfest, Butler Pennsylvania.

Some old protoboard like rat shack sold. I took these home.

I don't understand the prices on some of this stuff.

This guy had a collection of meters for sale.

My friend loved this but said he couldn't afford it just to play Mario Bros.

This show has a lot of tables of things.

bs25-stuff3.-wereboar.jpg — And even more random items.

An official Ma Bell teleprinter repair manual.

It was a dollar because there were no tubes.

Columbus (Shriners) Hamfest, Columbus Ohio.

This guy was selling a lot of good books cheap.

A Hallicrafters “Super Defiant” w/speaker.

Something homemade, covered with screen.

Probably deaf as a post when it was new.

Lots of meters. I didn't buy a voltmeter.

I took the Olson transistor supply home.

A couple of small speakers from the 'shack.

Cincinnati Hamfest, Cincinnati Ohio.

Obligatory Heathkit equipment, getting rarer.

This guy had a couple of good looking radios.

The radio on the top was given to me with a “Do something with it.”

The name of the former owner is engraved deeply.

A very nice tube tester and some radios.

This guy was selling Weston lab meters cheap.

Johnstown Swappers Day, Johnstown Ohio.

This stuff is getting kind of rare, but cool to see.

As is this stuff…no prices of course. Price it!

I think Coyote was just a masochist, and the roadrunner was his enabler.

A relative that messed around with the wrong crowd.

We had no idea what this was, just…trippy.

The Findlay Hamfest, Findlay Ohio.

Chinese bootleg Blu-Ray discs from years past.

The big rigs still show up in great numbers.

I almost took the AG-9 home, but it was damaged.

This was only a buck. These were built like tanks.

A bunch of interesting broadcast receivers.

If you say that wrong you get in trouble.

The Central Pennsylvania Hamfest, Clearfield Pennsylvania.

https://wereboar.com … ennsylvania-hamfest/

The Cleveland Hamfest, Berea Ohio.

One of many signal tracer/R-C analyzer devices. This went home with me.

The good, bad, and ugly of old test equipment makers.

Books are a staple of shows. I took the radio book on top.

A bunch of multi-stage filters with fire bottles.

A nice example of a Knight R-C analyzer.

A Craig Language Translator. It has common phrases on the back.

You can't go to a show without seeing one of these.

Some average condition Hallicrafters S53 units.

This unique Stromberg-Carlson floor speaker (cone long gone.)

Test equipment, with “eBay sells it for this!” prices.

Some needlenose went home with me from this stash.

One of many Zenith radios of this type that showed up.

The Early Television Museum Fall Swap, Hilliard Ohio.
(no image annotations on these pictures)

MARC @ MAPS Hamfest, Green (North Canton) Ohio.

A couple of clock radios. I bet they go “clunkclunkclunk.”

A selection of vintage meters. Got any 22.5V batteries?

The Fort Wayne Hamfest, Fort Wayne Indiana.

A lineup of rapidly vanishing boat anchors.

A seldom seen Squeezebox Boom. It went home with me.

A decent induction plate at a good price.

Too bad these take unobtanium batteries.

The Magnavox in the back was probably made nearby.

I bet you never thought you'd see radios!

Some Select-A-Tennas. These aren't mid-century.

The soldering iron and stand went home with me.

Anyone remember those early sound devices?

A very cool, but probably unrepairable Tek rack.

Remember Wang? They made minis and WP systems.

We thought this was a MASCO unit at first.

I always pick up appliance modules when I see them.

.

Here’s next year’s list. I’ve cut back some due to smaller shows all having the same vendors: https://wereboar.com … mfest-and-show-list/

That’s all for 2025. See you in the new year with more projects and more junk…I mean good stuff!

Posted by bryan in 09:57:56 in General, Events, Tech, Junk
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2025
Nov
24

Some last thoughts on Nostr.

I’ve been posting blog links to a federated social network called Nostr. This was mostly to drive traffic here, but I’d reply to anything that was sent to me that was not obvious spam. I’ve written about that in a couple of past posts:

Federated but disassociated: https://wereboar.com … etworking-via-nostr/

Some thoughts a few months later: https://wereboar.com … -after-a-few-months/

One of the reasons I chose the site I did was because it supported a feature of Nostr called “communities” - that’s exactly what it sounds like. A basic forum with a title and a common theme. I created /oldtech, a place for stuff like what I talk about here. While I never really got any other posts in the community, I did collect the usual spam.

Spam is a big problem on the Nostr network communities. There’s no good way to manage it, and the more popular you are the more you’ll get the standard Indian scams, crypto crap, and just general-purpose canned ham. You either approve it to show in the community, or you ignore it and it sits there in your inbox forever, waiting for you to approve it. In that regard, spam is very hard to control on Nostr, and it makes the communities messy.

Today I tried to make my usual Monday morning post and found that the site owner had removed communities in favor of a single feed of posts. The reason was that communities were “messy.” I fully understand this reasoning as there’s zero garbage control. Some of the communities I looked at had hundreds of pending spam messages in their box. (You can see pending messages, they just don’t show up in the regular feed.)

I kind of stepped back from this for a while, but I’ve started posting again seeing as how all of my old posts are there - they just aren’t in a community now.

You can still check out that feed at https://satellite.ea … 0s9sn9xgulwfqsy6uf4w

I’ll probably start posting there again.

Stay tuned for more hamfests, projects, and just plain junk!

Posted by bryan in 08:50:53 in General
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2025
Nov
13

My 2026 Hamfest and Show List

With 2025 coming to a close, I find myself thinking about each show I attended this past year, and which ones I want to go back to. While the first answer is “all of them!” - I think I’m going to cut back some this year. The smaller shows are cool, but I started seeing the same vendors and the same items over and over. This will give things a chance to cycle through.

So - instead of 15 hamfests, I think I’ll probably drop back to 8 or so. There may be a few others in there - Athens, OH and Clearfield, PA, but those will depend primarily on “if I feel like it,” and perhaps Fort Wayne if 2025’s show turns out better than 2024.

As before, not all shows have updated at the time of this posting, so check back or check the Ohio ARRL section page for current event times Links to pictures will be posted as soon as I can after a show, and there will be a year-end wrap-up.

Cuyahoga Falls Amateur Radio Club Hamfest
Emidio & Sons Party Center
48 E. Bath Road
Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
April 11
8A - 1PM
Admission $10
https://sites.google.com/cfarc.org/cfarc/hamfest
Event photos: Coming soon.

Dayton Hamvention
Greene County Fair and Expo Center - The Whole Thing
210 Fairground Road
Xenia, OH 45385
May 15 16 17
Hours vary by day, opens at 9AM
https://hamvention.org
Friday Photos: Coming soon.
Saturday Photos: Coming soon.
Sunday Photos: Coming soon.

Breezeshooters Hamfest
Butler Farm Show
625 Evans City Rd
Butler, PA 16001
Date TBA, usually June
8A - 2PM
https://breezeshooters.org/ns/
Event photos: Coming soon.

Columbus Hamfest
Aladdin Shrine Center
1801 Gateway Cir
Grove City, OH 43123
Date TBA, usually August
8A - 1PMish
https://aladdinshrine.org/hamfest/
Event photos: Coming soon.

Johnstown Swapper’s Day
Johnstown Community Sportsmen’s Club
7357 Sportsman Club Rd NW
Johnstown, OH 43031
Labor Day Weekend (Fri Sat Sun)
7A - 6P
https://jcscohio.org/swappers-day/
Event photos: Coming soon.

The Cleveland Hamfest and Computer Show
Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds, Eastland Entrance
160 Eastland Rd
Berea, OH 44107
Date TBA, usually September
8A - 12P
https://www.hac.org/
Event photos: Coming soon.

Early Television Museum Fall Swap Meet
The Early Television Museum
5396 Franklin St
Hilliard, OH 43026
Date TBA, usually October
10A - 2P
https://www.earlytelevision.org/swapmeet.html
Event photos: Coming soon

Scott Antique Market November
Ohio Expo Center (State Fairgrounds)
717 E 17th Ave
Columbus, OH 43211
Usually Thanksgiving weekend
Hours vary by day, check before you go.
https://www.scottantiquemarket.com/
Event photos: Coming soon

There’s a handful of “Maybe” this year as well. I’ll get to these if time allows:

ACARA Athens Hamfest
Athens Community Center
701 E State Street
Athens, OH 45701
Date TBA
https://www.ac-ara.org/

Central Pennsylvania Hamfest
Clearﬁeld County Fair Grounds, Agriculture Building and grounds
5615 Park St
Clearﬁeld, PA 16830
Date TBA
https://clearfieldcountyarc.net/hamfest/

MARC Hamfest
Military Air Preservation Society Hanger (MAPS)
2620 International Parkway
Green, OH 44232
Date TBA
http://w8np.net

Fort Wayne Hamfest
Allen Country War Memorial Coliseum
4000 Parnell Ave
Fort Wayne, IN 46805
Date TBA, usually right before Thanksgiving weekend
https://www.acarts.com/hfmain.htm

Johnstown Swappers Day and the Scott Antique Market aren’t really hamfests, but enough electrical and other goodies show up that it’s worth going if you’re in to general flea market type items. The Early Television Museum is a swap meet that happens during one of the venue’s open work days, so who knows what will show up there.

Always check dates and times before you go, and I’ll see you there!

Posted by bryan in 08:57:18 in General, Events, Tech, Junk
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