KI4LLF

Thursday, June 30, 2011

I Love My Job

Today I had to modify Yaesu FT60R ham radios for Emergency Management. Now our first responders can transmit on Police, Fire, Marine & amateur bands. This makes inter-agency operations possible in an emergency situation.

I only had to remove this one smt resistor.

I used Kapton tape to protect the circuit board in case my hand slipped, that is the yellow bits in the photo. NASA has been using Kapton tape since the Apollo missions because of its excellent thermal properties.

To get an idea of the size of the resistor, I photographed it against a metric ruler. The resistor is about 1.0 mm in length and 0.5 mm wide. It is so small I had to use a 10x magnifying lamp while wearing 4x magnifying glasses. This also shows the beauty of digital electronics. Converting an analog radio would be more time consuming, would have required replacing some parts, re-tuning some others & would have required expensive test equipment.

Did I mention, I love my job? 8^)

Friday, June 24, 2011

T-Hawk down!

Honeywell T-Hawk Micro Air Vehicle

TOKYO -A small 8.2 kilogram drone aircraft gathering data from heavily damaged areas of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant lost control Friday and landed on the roof of the No. 2 reactor building, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
The vehicle, known as a T-Hawk, is about 50 centimeters in diameter and looks like a small jet pack. It is used primarily by the military for reconnaissance work in dangerous areas. It has been used at Fukushima Daiichi since mid-April to assist in damage assessment.
The company said there didn't appear to be any damage from the impact of the vehicle, with no fire or smoke observed following the accident. It wasn't known if the vehicle was damaged in any way.
By Mitsuru Obe Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

So what is a T-Hawk?
It looks like my kind of toy!! With all the new 3-axis accelerometers and microchips available this should be easy for a hobbyist to build.

For more info about T-Hawks and their use look at some of these links:

T-Hawk data sheet

T-Hawk Sales Brochure

What the aircraft industry is saying:

Avionics - Aug 2010

Aviation Week & Space Technology - June 14/21 2010

Unmanned Vehicles - Oct/Nov 2009

These links and more info (& video too) can be found at Honeywell T-Hawk

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Gamma ray flash still ongoing

This artist's image provided by the
University of Warwick shows a
star being distorted by its close
passage to a supermassive
black hole at the center of a galaxy.

A monster black hole devoured a Sun-like star, producing a long-lasting gamma ray flash. The star was likely destroyed because it wandered too close to its galaxy’s central black hole, located in the constellation Draco 4 billion light years away. Earth just happened to get in the way of this stream of gamma rays produced 4 billon years ago. That 'flash' lasted for months and is still going on now. Gamma ray bursts usually flare up and end in a matter of seconds or milliseconds.