Category: poetry

Sunburst and Luminary — A Poem about Transistors and ICs

Sunburst and Luminary by Don Eyles has a lot of the kind of color that helps the reader understand what was going on technologically during the 1960s. For example, there is this poem about integrated circuits (you don’t get to use “poem” and “integrated circuits” in the same sentence very often):

The transistor’s a marvelous invention
Replaced the tube convention
Found its niche
To amplify or switch
Whatever the designer’s intention.

But the breakthrough was the IC
Integrated monolithically
It became pivotal
As computers went digital
With increasing complexity.

Eyles tells us that this poem was written by hardware designer Jayne Partridge, and appears in Eldon Hall’s write-up of the Apollo Guidance Computer and the decision to use ICs in it:

SolderSmoke Podcast #73 Jan 2, 2008 — AA1TJ Circuits and Poetry, Mixers, CW, Straight Key Night at WA6ARA, Boatanchors in South Africa with ZS6ADY (Part 1)

This is the first in a series of four podcast that include Echolink conversations with Andy ZS6ADY about old tube radios (boatanchors) in South Africa. Click on the YouTube link above to listen.

January 2, 2008 SPECIAL NEW YEAR’S EDITION AA1TJ’s circuitry and poetry. Homemade tubes. Book Review “Early Radio” by Peter Jensen. The Vatican’s antennas. Google Earth flight simulator. Mixer madness continues (now in LTSpice). Mars-asteroid collision? Bollywood: The BITX-20 connection. BANDSWEEP: Straight Key Night at WA6ARA. ECHO-GUEST: Andy, ZS6ADY, South African Boatanchor fan. MAILBAG: Jake N4UY(NOVA QRP), Steve G0FUE (Bath Build-a-thon), Nigel M0NDE

A Poem about Shacks and Rigs and Ham Radio

The Little Black Box of jewels and rocks
with lanterns that flicker and glow,
make lighter the gloom in my little back-room
where often I hasten to go.
An anthem it peals of whistles and squeals
and voices so ghostly and dear
that you’d never decry, should you chance to pass by-
what a brotherhood foregathers here!

Each separate tone has a soul of its own;
each voice is the voice of a friend.
United through space in this gathering-place
at the radiant signal’s end.
Reverberant sounds ride the wave that rebounds,
like the waves of the sea from afar,
reporting the doings, the comings and goings
of brothers… wherever they are.

A curious band, spread over the land,
yet joined from equator to poles
disperses the gloom in the little back-rooms
by this magic communion of souls.
I could part with a lot of the things that I’ve got,
but I’ll carry my love to the tomb,
of that little black box and the joys it unlocks
… when I enter that little back room.

(published in QST magazine sometime 1965.)

Thanks to Jeff Murray for alerting us to this. I had not seen it before. It really got me — I am working in my little back room on a box with jewels (jeweled movements!) and rocks.

Jerry’s Sproutie: A Short Wave Receiver (and a Limerick) by Jerry KI4IO

Jerry KI4IO is a really talented homebrewer; I’ve called him the Wizard of Warrenton:
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-wizard-of-warrenton-jerry-ki4io.html
and
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2019/05/fdim-interview-with-ki4io-homebrew.html

Warrenton Va. is not far from me (and is the birthplace of Cappucio the Wonder Dog). Once we are done with the pandemic I hope that Jerry and I can get together to talk about homebrew radio.

Like me, Jerry recently turned his attention to the shortwave broadcast bands. He too went the homebrew route, but his receiver is a regen. It is based on the Sproutie by Dave AA7EE.

Here is Jerry’s article detailing the project and the results:

http://soldersmoke.com/KI4IORX2.pdf
Jerry had been scheduled to talk about antenna tuners at FDIM this year, but the pandemic caused the event to be canceled. He shared with me a Limerick that he was going to include in the presentation. Obviously we have similar feelings about automatic antenna tuners.

In days of old
when hams we bold
and BALUNs weren’t invented
We adjusted our C
and fiddled with L
and reflected power was prevented

KI4IO in his shack Feb 2020

Minimalist Masochism at Solar Minima — But More Contacts with the ET-2

Dylan Thoams

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light”

I thought of that line from Dylan Thomas’s poem when I read on G3XBM’s web site that we are kind of at the very bottom of the solar cycle. Roger wrote on 22 October: “Solar flux is 64 and the SSN 0. A=5 and K=0. As far as I am aware this is the lowest solar flux this solar minimum.”

I also thought of this as I pounded brass (Indian brass!) in an effort to make a few more contacts with my ET-2 two transistor rig. Obviously venturing forth on 40 meters with just TWO transistors (one for transmit and one for receive) and crystal control AT SOLAR MINIMA is not for the faint of heart. It is almost a Dylan-esque act of defiance.

I have had to resort to pleas for help on the DX Summit, the SolderSmoke blog, and the SKCC Schedule page. Fortunately for me, the brotherhood has sprung to my support.

W1PID (who gave me contact #3) also gave me contact #4 on 21 October.

W4KAC in Hickory NC was contact #5. This was on 22 October. This was the only marginal contact so far. He was running 5 W into an end fed half wave.

Yesterday was a big day for the ET-2. I had two solid contacts:

#6 was N2VGA in New York UPDATE: Larry N2VGA confirmed by e-mail that this was a “random” contact — not the result of my on-line pleas for assistance. He just heard my CQ and responded. FB.

#7 was K4CML in Newport News, Va. He switched to QRP himself at 2.5 watts for a nice 2X QRP contact.

Looking at my Rigol ‘scope, I now think I’m putting out about 150 milliwatts. Not bad for a single J310. I may have to invest in a heat sink.

40 seems most cooperative in the morning (around 0930 local) and again in the afternoon (around 1630 local).

Thanks to all who have helped. I will try to make a few more.

Solar Cycle 25 — The High Frequency Oracle Has Spoken (THFOHS!)

Not quite as authoritative as a spoken message from the The Radio Gods themselves (as in TRGHS), but the HF Oracle seems to be well connected. Time to start planning for Moxons and Hex Beams!

Read the full poetic report from the Oracle here:

https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/the-hf-oracle-prognostication-for-solar-cycle-25.626433/

A Sweet Little Poem for Valentines Day

I was alone and all was dark

Beneath me and above
My life was full of volts and amps
But not the spark of love
But now that you are here with me
My heart is overjoyed
You’ve turned the square of my heart
Into a sinusoid
You load things from my memory
Onto my system bus
My life was once assembly code
It’s now like C++
I love the way you solder things
My circuits you can fix
The voltage ‘cross your diode is
much more than just point six
With your op-amps and resistors
You have built my integrator
I cannot survive without you
You’re my function generator
You’ve changed my world, increased my gain
And made my math discreet
So now I’ll end my poem here
Control, Alt, and Delete

You might not want to actually use any of that poetry today.
Sent in to us by Bob Crane, W8SX

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

Another QRPoet

I’m a big fan of Ade Weiss, and I often find myself reaching to his “History of QRP” for technical or techno-literary inspiration. Most writing about ham radio is (understandably) done in a very straightforward technical way, without a lot of emotion. But Ade’s writing style captures both the technical and the emotional aspects of homebrewing and QRP. There is a definite poetic elements to it. This article was sent to us from the Hobbit Hole by the Poet Laureate of QRP (AA1TJ). Just click on on the image to enlarge. From a 1973 issue of The Milliwatt:

Radio, Douglas MacArthur, and staying young at heart

Art, KG6ZWD, sent this along. General MacArthur kept this poem displayed above his desk in Manila, and frequently quoted from it during his time in Tokyo. The radio part comes near the end.

Youth

By Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.