It's all good junk here.
Wednesday, December 31, 2025 at 20:31:24
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.
Tuesday, December 30, 2025 at 09:57:56
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.
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The Cuyahoga Falls ARC Hamfest, Cuyahoga Falls Ohio.
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The TUSCO Hamfest, New Philadelphia Ohio.
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The Athens County ARA Hamfest, Athens Ohio.
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The Dayton Hamvention, Xenia Ohio.
Friday:
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Saturday:
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The Scioto Valley ARC, Piketon Ohio.
https://wereboar.com … -2025-svarc-hamfest/
Breezeshooters Hamfest, Butler Pennsylvania.
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Columbus (Shriners) Hamfest, Columbus Ohio.
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Cincinnati Hamfest, Cincinnati Ohio.
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Johnstown Swappers Day, Johnstown Ohio.
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The Findlay Hamfest, Findlay Ohio.
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The Central Pennsylvania Hamfest, Clearfield Pennsylvania.
https://wereboar.com … ennsylvania-hamfest/
The Cleveland Hamfest, Berea Ohio.
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The Early Television Museum Fall Swap, Hilliard Ohio.
(no image annotations on these pictures)
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MARC @ MAPS Hamfest, Green (North Canton) Ohio.
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The Fort Wayne Hamfest, Fort Wayne Indiana.
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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!
Monday, November 24, 2025 at 08:50:53
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!
Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 08:57:18
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 - CFARC - Hamfest
Emidio & Sons Party Center
48 E. Bath Road
Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
Saturday April 11
8A - 1PM
Admission $10
https://sites.google.com/cfarc.org/cfarc/hamfest
Event photos: https://wereboar.com … nnual-cfarc-hamfest/
Dayton Hamvention
Greene County Fair and Expo Center - The Whole Thing
210 Fairground Road
Xenia, OH 45385
Fri Sat Sun May 15 16 17
Hours vary by day, opens at 9AM
https://hamvention.org
Friday Photos: https://wereboar.com … 6-dayton-hamvention/
Saturday Photos: https://wereboar.com … 6-dayton-hamvention/
Sunday Photos: Didn’t make it Sunday.
Breezeshooters Hamfest
Butler Farm Show
625 Evans City Rd
Butler, PA 16001
Sunday June 14
8A - 2PM
https://breezeshooters.org/ns/
Event photos: Coming soon.
Columbus Hamfest
Aladdin Shrine Center
1801 Gateway Cir
Grove City, OH 43123
Saturday August 1
8A - 1PMish
https://aladdinshrine.org/hamfest/
https://www.arrl.org/hamfests/2026-columbus-ham-fest
Event photos: Coming soon.
Johnstown Swapper’s Day
Johnstown Community Sportsmen’s Club
7357 Sportsman Club Rd NW
Johnstown, OH 43031
Labor Day Weekend
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
Sunday September 27
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:
Central Pennsylvania Hamfest
Clearfield County Fair Grounds, Agriculture Building and grounds
5615 Park St
Clearfield, PA 16830
Sunday September 13
https://clearfieldcountyarc.net/hamfest/
MARC Hamfest
Military Air Preservation Society Hanger (MAPS)
2620 International Parkway
Green, OH 44232
Date TBA, Usually early November
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!
Sunday, October 19, 2025 at 08:49:12
This was the first time I’d gone to this show, and - while small - it offered quite a bit of television focused vendors. The usual flea market tat that shows up at hamfests these days was absent, even though the show was free to set up and enter.
I did end up spending about $45 and taking home a few project items which may show up later, depending on what I have scheduled. Regardless, here are the photos I took. I don’t have much to say about them, so there’s no description, just enjoy the glory of old television.
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We did a museum tour as well, and that is well worth the admission price. I highly recommend that if you’re in the area. We didn’t stick around for the auction, while there were a few lunchboxes I’d like to take home I already have examples of them and do not need more.
I’ll be heading back to this one again.
Thursday, October 9, 2025 at 07:42:53
…even your reprint manuals are starting to fall apart. My reprinted copy of the RCA RC-19 tube manual has started to break apart, the glued binding giving way.
This book probably qualifies as an antique itself!
Monday, September 29, 2025 at 05:35:43
Today’s board comes to you from a resale shop. A friend purchased this (used) electronic crossover for his audio stack, and wanted to open it up to give the controls a cleaning and give it a general once-over. Inside was a well laid-out board with plenty of space and a bunch of antique RCA op-amps. The unit works great, and immediately went into the stack.
However, seeing as this was made in the 1980s right here in the USA, we looked for that one particular mark:
Yep, there it is. That orange script “T” indicating the raw board was manufactured at the GE plant on South 2nd Street in Coshocton, Ohio.
How many stories could the board manufactured there tell us?
Friday, July 4, 2025 at 18:18:40
July 4th, 2021 is when I opened this as pygg.xyz and transferred some of my old blogger.com content here.
I don’t have anything special to present except thank you - I appreciate all of the views I get here, and I hope you’ve found something of interest over the past 4 years.
I have a number of devices and shows in the works, please check back soon.
Monday, April 7, 2025 at 07:11:19
Recently, I had someone on a forum quite emphatically indicate to me that I was doing it wrong, and that I should ground (earth) everything - also indicating that I should just use IEC connectors and cut holes in irreplaceable chassis units and simply “Make some paint.” I then got the reddit response of “Gulp!” and “Who told you that?” when I said I just use isolation and let things float, and that no holes shall be cut.
Well, thank you - but I’m not going to do that. One, I don’t want to destroy equipment. If you want to after I’m dead, that’s your decision.
But also, I’m not going to ground everything. You don’t ground everything because you can. This was in relation to the Heathkit AF-1 that’s I’m currently rebuilding. It has some quirks that don’t really allow that to happen. And, I learned a different way. Just because the internet tells you that every capacitor is bad, and that every device has to be earthed, doesn’t mean you do it.
Who told me that you don’t ground everything? Two people, actually.
The first gentleman was a rusty crusty old military man that spent his second career working for Rockwell before they shut his shop down in the 90s. Mr. Lehman was the maintenance guy for electronic controls, and had seen it all - everything from tubes to modern (for the time) DCS. I got involved with him because he was a friends father, and I had an amplifier that was floating 70VAC above ground. You’re probably familiar with this, it’s either because the grounding is improper or something is leaking. When I took this amp to him in the early 80s, he poked at it for a moment and said “This stuff wasn’t necessarily built well. There were rules, but they didn’t always follow them because they didn’t have to. You’ve either got something in here leaking or it’s just built that way. The stuff it was supposed to be connected to didn’t care, that’s why it’s all painted with plastic knobs.” We went over the device, he related how to check things to make sure that you COULD properly earth this device - in ths case, the transformer wasn’t leaking, it had a transformer, and you weren’t going to cause ground loops because earth and input were at differing potentials. He taught me about making sure that nothing in there is going to leak a lot of current if you ground it, and in this case it was just that the grounding in the device was crap. He said that in this case you can and should ground it, but you always need to make sure that you’re doing it for the right reasons - not just because you have an earth/safety ground.
Second, was my first electronics instructor. Mr. Norman had been around in electronics almost as long as there was electronics to be in. He too was a military guy that did his WWII term and went back into consumer electronics when he was discharged, having been in that same field beforehand. He was the local guy that RCA, GE, and the others gave the warranty projects to. He saw the peak of radio and the rise of television, and had more interesting stories than you could remember. One of the first things we did in his class was build an AA5 from one of those kits you used to be able to buy. Of course, they had been used and abused over the years, so we had to be careful - and this was before you had an Intenet source for tubes so all of the 35W4 had been replaced by diodes and a big honkin’ stack of resistors. (He said don’t do this because you strip cathodes, but for this we don’t care - you’re the last class that’s going to use these.) But those could be hot chassis sets, and they didn’t have polarized cords. I didn’t understand that at first, but it was because he was teaching us good practices. He showed us what happened if you accidentally touched or grounded a chassis that could be hot, and said you’ll not always have the ability to replace cords on customer devices with polarized cords. (This was when we still repaired TVs and stuff.) Best practice would be to put a polarized cord on that, but you don’t always have that option. (All of the stuff I get has a polarized cord replacement, even if the old one is still good.) He showed us what happened if you got differing potentials on things, and the damage you can cause if you’re trying to talk to something that doesn’t like being earthed. He taught us that you should ground things when you know you need it, and in some cases you’ll need to lift the ground. Again, he (in much more colorful terms because it was all guys) told us that you should always make sure you know WHY you’re grounding, not just because you can.
I learned about lifted grounds the first time I burnt out a very expensive isolated transceiver loop in a device I’d acquired.
That brings us to this chassis. Let’s say I ground it to earth.
In the manual, Heath warns us that the signal return is actually chassis. This is specifically called out as a note. It doesn’t say why, but it’s important. You’re expected to know why at this point, because this was considered to be an advanced kit and didn’t even include assembly instructions, just some guidelines. Why did they warn us? Because you could potentially see AC on the chassis. You could see high voltage DC on the chassis. Not from this device itself, but from the UUT. This device is transformer isolated.
DC return is also chassis. That doesn’t really matter for this case.
If I chassis ground this device (and no, it does not have the ground hole in the back and should not be grounded) then I run the risk of shunting something that doesn’t like to be grounded directly to ground because signal return is chassis. That’s the takeaway here. This device was not designed to be operated like this, and could be dangerous doing so.
The isolation transformer I use for all my testing is there so you don’t leak back to line.
I understand that some are not comfortable working with ungrounded equipment, and that’s ok. We all have the methods we use. My methods were taught to me in a world where you are absolutely going to run across things that leak, have hot chassis, or worse, and you may not be able to do anything about them. I was taught how to mitigate that, and I’d rather have all of my work floating hot on an isolated line than run the risk of accidentally connecting signal to ground and destroying things because I grounded something that wasn’t designed to be grounded.
That’s where I get my methods.
But also, some of the equipment I have could be grounded, if needed. Look on the back of a IG-72 signal generator. See that little hole by the cord, how it looks just the size of a Heathkit screw? That’s for a ground - IF YOU NEED IT, not just because you can - and you have to understand that it’s also using chassis for signal return. That’s the takeaway here. Don’t do it just because you can, make sure you’re doing it for necessary reasons.
(Here’s something from later me…I recently acquired another IG-72. and the previous owner changed the cord out for a grounded one. Why? They were a FAA certified repair shop, and needed everything to be referenced to a single ground. Floating delicate avionics could damage them. This time, it was appropriate to ground the device!)
The long and short here is this chassis is a good example of why you don’t just do the one-size-fits-all thing. In this case, grounding a chassis signal return could provide you with some sparks. Always be aware of WHAT you’re doing, and WHY you’re doing it.
Friday, April 4, 2025 at 07:24:08
One of the concerns about high tariffs is this will destroy the hobbyist electronics crowd.
Up to about the 1960s, it (hobby electronics) was big because we made parts here and you could literally go to the corner store, and they might have had some small selections of parts - big parts houses were everywhere and cities tended to have a dealer or two for components and equipment where you could walk in the door and buy stuff.
The 60s-2000s were a dry spell as things started to move offshore and it became harder to get parts easily. Less exposure to the common man means less latent interest in the thing.
The last time I was able to walk in the door and get non-generic parts was in the very early 1990s when JW Electronics in Coshocton and the RCA SK dealer in Zanesville, Thompson Radio, closed their doors. Of course, there was always Radio Shack, but their parts selection dwindled over the years until vanishing completely - at best being a “I need it now and can make this work” stop.
All of those were kept alive until the bitter end by the inertia of their past sales, their commercial customers that used to buy components to fix things having long since faded away.
The 2000s started a boom. It’s cheap and easy to get those parts again - the “maker” movement is proof of that. But, with high tariffs on things, it’s going to potentially stop that dead in it’s tracks. You want a $5 pack of LEDs and resistors and a couple of ESP-32 boards? If each item has a 30% or $50 charge on it, no hobbyist is going to buy it.
Personally, I’ve made probably my last orders of sensors and other devices for the near future. I hope I can squeak them in before these tariffs hit, because there will be a lot of things I simply take a loss on otherwise.
Those few places that still fix electronics - the odd CB shop on the interstate - may find themselves priced out of business with parts being taxed at higher rates than the cost of the part.
There’s no perfect solution to this. This seems to be a bit heavier handed than it needs to be, and there’s going to be a lot of pain - and probably some jobs lost here as companies that sprung up to do last mile delivery start stumble and fail. This may even affect big carriers as less import means less traffic.
Who knows what’s going to happen. But, as the great Red Green said: I’m pulling for you, we’re all in this together.
(this was also posted on my LinkedIn profile, both as a comment and a post.)