Category: Jean Shepherd

Jean Shepherd’s Shack Gets Hit by Lightning


 Yikes! This is really good! Thanks to Harv for sending us this link: Poor Shep!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akyTVNorXQ8&feature=player_detailpage

Greetings Bill,

Have been loving each Soldersmoke Podcast and Blog Segment recently.
You and Pete have made the program a superb treat while I’ve been busy with the Radio Room construction.

Building the Radio Room is like constructing an ARK in your Basement. Everything is being done in pairs
and the water keeps rising. (No kidding)…
I encountered two water breaks in the Radio Room while construction was under way but, that is a whole different story.
Fortunately none of my prized boat anchors were damaged.

The project; (The Radio Room), includes operating positions for 14 complete stations.
That wouldn’t be too bad except I’m constructing walls, benches and over-head lighting from complete scratch.
While this is going on, I wanted to finish my 3.579 MHz CBLA transmitter and return to the Minima build that I started in April 2014.
However, in September, I retired and moved to another state. The reality of the latter took awhile to sink in. Most Ham Projects took a back seat to higher priorities. I will soon have the Radio Room I always dreamed of. The Drake 2B fills the space with the sound of 20 Mtr CW and the anticipation of having the HT-37 brewing away is just around the bend.

I’m taking a short sabbatical from the Ham Shack construction to get caught up on some other household projects.
In this notion of taking a needed break, I rediscovered Jean Shepherd’s programs on Youtube.
I started to dissect Sheps monologue when I found that familiar path in my own life as a 15 yr. old Ham in the mid-1960s.
I’m sure you too can relate to Jeans’ life as a kid.
I really liked his broadcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akyTVNorXQ8&feature=player_detailpage
“Lightning Hits the Ham Radio.” Near the end of the program, he mentions that his life was over because his
Dad hammered him over the damage to the house by the lightning strike. I’d love to hear the rest of that story!!!

Please keep up the great efforts with Soldersmoke and bringing us all that good Tribal Knowledge. I think we should all go build something.
Looking forward to what’s next. Thanks to You and Pete.

73’s
De -=WA3EIB=- Harv
Eastern Idaho

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

EXCELSIOR! Jean Shepherd’s Birthday

Bob Crane (and, I think, Garrison Keillor) alerted us to this important birthday:

It’s the birthday of humorist Jean Shepherd (books by this author), born in Chicago, Illinois (1921). He’s remembered for the autobiographical stories he told on the radio about a boy named Ralph Parker growing up in Hohman, Indiana. One of his stories was made into the movie A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated. It’s about a boy who wants a BB gun for Christmas, even though every adult in his life says that he’ll shoot his eye out.
The stories Shepherd told on-air were always improvised, but he later wrote them down and published them in collections like In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (1967) and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters (1972).
Jean Shepherd said: “Some men are Baptists, others Catholics. My father was an Oldsmobile man.”

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

Hamfest Presentation on SolderSmoke and BITX (Video)

The Vienna Wireless Society of Northern Virginia asked me to give a talk at their 23 Feb 2014 hamfest. I spoke about homebrewing and the BITX transceivers. Click on the link below to watch the video. (Special thanks to Elisa for doing the video.)

https://vimeo.com/87725154

The Powerpoint slides are here:

http://soldersmoke.com/winterfest.pptx

For those who just want to listen podcast style, I will try to turn the audio into a podcast and will post it via the normal channels.

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

EXCELSIOR! Happy Birthday Jean Shepherd

NPR’s “Writer’s Almanac” alerted us to this: Shep was born on this day in 1925. I realize now that that made him just a week or so older than my dad (who was a big fan).
Here is a really nice site with info about Shep, ham radio, and his call sign:

EXCELSIOR !!!!!!!!!!!

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

Two great sites from Rogier

Our Bay Area correspondent Rogier (orignally PA1ZZ, now KJ6ETL) recently sent us links to two very interesting sites. The first is a collection of Jean Shepherd programs. EXCELSIOR!
http://www.flicklives.com/Mass_Back/massbackpodcast.xml

The second is a collection of electronics tutorial videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Afrotechmods?feature=watch

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

Homebrew transistors, QRSS Blog, Shep Show, Nose as toubleshooting tool

Some odds and ends today:

Ed, KC2TYP alerted me to this one: Jeff, K7JPD, has a very intriguing blog post about homebrew transistors. I suspect AA1TJ will have a rig made of these things on the air within a week. Check it out:
http://jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com/227856.html

There is a new blog for the Knights of the QRSS:
http://knightsqrss.blogspot.com/

Dave in Ireland sent me a link to the Jean Shepherd show in which he discusses his first soldering iron: http://www.archive.org/download/JeanShepherd1975/1975_07_30_Soldering_Iron_full_show.mp3

Alan, WA9IRS, alerted us to a nice EDN article on using your nose as a trouble-shooting tool:
http://www.edn.com/article/CA6713738.html

Shep: UHF and Deep Space Communications

On this one, it takes a while for Shep to get to the radio stuff, but it is worth the wait. Or you could fast forward to around the half-way point (but in doing so you will miss the commercial for Miller High-Life, and Shep’s discussions of Monolopy and the Game of Love).

http://ia310115.us.archive.org/2/items/JeanShepherd1965Pt1/1965_04_15_Radio_Signals.mp3

Jean Shepherd Gets His Class A License

I was drifting off into Linux-land, but an e-mail from OM Gene, K8EE, brought me back. I’d thought that we had already unearthed all of the best ham radio episodes of the Jean Shepherd shows. WRONG! K8EE sent me YouTube recordings of the January 7, 1964 show on WOR New York. Gents, all I can say is that you should stop what you are doing, and listen to this. (And don’t miss the exciting conclusion in part 2!)

“Mr. Rupp, what do you know about the Mu of an ‘807?” Indeed.

Shep, SETI, Radar, Spark Coils

In this episode Shep builds a 2 meter rig to talk to locals, but picks up signals from much farther away. Musings on extraterrestrial DX. Also, our hero gets zapped by a spark coil.
As always, it takes Shep a while to get going on the ham radio stuff, so you might want to fast-forward through the groovy 1965 small talk at the beginning. EXCELSIOR!
Here is the mp3: Shep, 1965, 2 meters, SETI, Spark Coils.

The BEST Jean Shepherd Ham Radio Episode

Mark, W8MOJ, found this one a while back, but then somehow we lost it. This morning I found it again. Jean Shepherd talks about ham radio homebrewing, regen receivers, searching for parts at radio row, building stuff in the basement, secretly studying for his ham license during civics class, and one of his teenage ham friends who, in his basement, secretly built a…..

“Other kids would draw Christmas trees and sailboats… I would draw schematics of phone transmitters.”

Don’t miss this one! Here is the link to the mp3 file: Jean Shepherd, January 24, 1973

Jean Shepherd: KNACK VICTIM!

Guys, stop what you are doing. Put down that soldering iron, or that cold Miller High Life (“the champagne of bottled beer”) and click on the link below. You will be transported back to 1965, and will hear master story-teller Jean Shepherd (K2ORS) describing his teenage case of The Knack. He discusses his efforts to build a Heising modulated transmitter for 160 meters. He had trouble getting it working, and became obsessed with the problem, obsessed to the point that a girl he was dating concluded that there was “something wrong with him” and that his mother “should take him to a doctor.”

This one is REALLY good. It takes him a few minutes to get to the radio stuff, but it is worth the wait. More to follow. EXCELSIOR! FLICK LIVES!

http://ia310115.us.archive.org/2/items/JeanShepherd1965Pt1/1965_01_29_Ham_Radio.mp3