Category: Poland

How to Homebrew your own Transistors

No store-bought transistors for these guys — they homebrew their own point contact transistors using a bit of Germanium from a diode. This makes me feel like such an appliance operator.

This video is in Polish, but The Knack is a universal language, and this guy obviously speaks it. Turn on captions, then opt for auto-translate to English. You will then get English subtitles and Bob will be your uncle.

I really liked this one. This fellow has obviously DONE this; his video is filled with both practical tips and theoretical explanations. He talks about the virtues of beeswax, and about how to borrow red nail polish to mark the collector lead. FB.


In their next episode they promise to build a radio receiver using the homebrew transistors. That’ll be great.

Thanks to Marcin and company, and to Jenny List of Hack-A-Day who alerted us to this.

But who is the fellow who built the homebrew transistor?

Other Workshops: A Twin Cylinder Solenoid Electric Motor and some Very Cool Craftsmanship

This project caught my eye for a couple of reasons:

First, it is the product of a very cool metal shop and a very skilled craftsman. It is fun and inspiring just to watch Maceij build this motor. We see great precision in the metal cuts, speedy tap and die work, and some great PC board technique. The use of an open flame on the heat shrink material was, well a bit courageous.

Second, this is a far more sophisticated version of the trivial electric motor that my son Billy and I built 17 years ago (I still have it!), following up on inspiration from Alan Yates VK2ZAY (see below). With Alan’s device we turned on power to the commutator by just sanding away the insulation on one side of the enameled wiring. Maceij takes a much more sophisticated approach, with carefully milled switches and opto controllers turning on and off power at the right time to each of the solenoids.

Maceij’s YouTube channel has many other projects, many like this one: https://www.youtube.com/@maciejnowakprojects

Thanks to HackaDay for the heads up.

Peter Parker’s Video on SP5AHT’s Phasing Receiver

There are so many very cool aspects of this project: I love the phasing receiver arrangement — it uses the same basic concept that allows my old HT-37 to generate SSB (I struggled to understand it as a kid, and finally succeeded!). The use of the mobile phone as an audio spectrum analyzer is wonderful. The N3ZI signal generator looks a lot like the DDS project I was working on (I should have bought N3ZI’s! ). I’ve been seeing these square pattern PC boards in many projects lately — I may try this in my next project. And of course, it is very cool to see a circuit designed in Poland being put to use by a fellow radio amateur in Australia — a good example of the International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards!

Here is the page for the SP5AHT rig that inspired Peter:

http://www.sp-qrp.pl/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=54

It is in Polish, but Google should translate it, and, in any case, we all speak Schematic!

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

More Homebrew Tubes — This Time from Poland

That’s a homebrew triode built in an apartment workshop by the intrepid Polish radio wizard Aleksander Zawada. The last line in the blog post really got to me:

“All is needed now is to solder a socket to the base of the triode, and use it to make (for example) a regenerative radio receiver!”

Check it out: http://lekernel.net/blog/2011/09/prywatna-wytwornia-lamp-where-diy-meets-vacuum-electron-devices/

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