How did you get into electronics?

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GonzoEngineer said:
Thank your Brother in Law for me......I got my butt saved a few times by those "Beefy-2's".

Did you keep the headset? They are high impedance and hard to find......something you need for a crystal radio!

I got a Galena crystal if you want it.
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He became an X brother in law in the mid 70's. I have not spoken to him since then.

The headset is long gone. To many years and moves.

When I was in the 6th or 7th grade I wanted to grow plants under lights. I obtained a fluorescent bulb and soldered a line cord to it. It made a very nice flash bulb. In time I figured out it needed a ballast. It sure would have been nice to have the web back then.

I miss what Popular Electronics provided. Strange as it may seem I have found the same sort of stimulation from the Circuit Cellar. It has a nice mix of projects and educational articles. A bit of it goes over my head but that is better then the alternative. I think most of the regulars here would enjoy it.

3v0
 

I can top that story.......but I won't.....you guy's would be laughing at me for months!

(ON SECOND THOUGHT, THAT GIVES ME AN IDEA FOR A NEW POST!)
 
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I view such early adventures as training for the endless string of stupid things I do every day. Like forgetting to plun in the ICSP cable and wondering why the target was not ID'ed. The good news is that now the period of confusion is much shorter

GonzoEngineer said:
I can top that story.......but I won't.....you guy's would be laughing at me for months!

(ON SECOND THOUGHT, THAT GIVES ME AN IDEA FOR A NEW POST!)
Click to expand...
 
I got into electronics in the late seventies, purely as a hobbyist, fault finding and repairing CB radios and the like, but lost touch due to family responsibities.
I have been taken by suprise at the advances, but the miniturisation, and use of SMD components seem to have taken a lot of the mystique away from the hobby, I agree that there is generaly a higher degree of reliability and longevity in modern mass produced equipment, but I really hate the throw away society in which we now live. Karl
 
When I was around seven or eight I was visiting my grandmother one Sunday. A uncle who was an engineer at HP was there also and we were watching her black and white TV. My uncle was not happy with something about the picture and went to his car to get his multimeter. He then had the TV chassis out and on it's side and was measuring things. I got a look at all the parts and stuff inside the chassis I was hooked and just had to know about how all that stuff worked. Started reading magazines and sticking wires into outlets and other great things. Later went into the Air Force and received formal training in electronics and worked in that field my whole adult life prior to my recent retirement. Loved the work, but it's changed a lot with less dependency on theory and component level knowledge and more of system knowledge. Not sure I would enjoy it as much if starting today.

Lefty
 
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I have a fairly large collection of Popular Electronics, Electronix Now, Electronics Illustrated, Radio Electronics, and books by Forest Mims. A good many of those old magazines are the small size issues where they not only showed the schematic but an illustrated connection diagram. To think there was a time when I actually relied on those pictorial diagrams over the schematic one. Now it's the opposite... pictorial diagrams just seem to confuse me further, versus constructing a circuit according to the schematic. My collection dates back well into the 60's --- what a hoot to read about germanium diodes, 2-way bookshelf speakers, and all those EICO or Knight kits!!!
 
HiTech said:
I have a fairly large collection of Popular Electronics, Electronix Now, Electronics Illustrated, Radio Electronics, and books by Forest Mims.
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I have boxes full of those old magazines. Their projects usually had errors that were fixed in later issues. I would like to get rid of the magazines, do you think they have any value?
 
Nigel Goodwin said:
Only one of the them - the RSGB Handbook is equally good.

Anyone interested in Electronics should have at least one of them, and preferably both.
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i would also say BOTH
we communication engineers of used to have HMSO Hand book of line communications by Royal Signals etc and were considered as books of authority of the subjects
 
My first electronics class was offered in my final year of high school, 1967. It was taught by my wood shop teacher, who basically read three chapters ahead of us and then taught from the teacher's guide. I would occasionally correct him as I had been reading up from library books and building Eico kits. My greatest contribution to our labs was to demonstrate how a coat hanger, a D cell and a sheet of metal could be made to arc and spark like a welding rod.

That, and the Air Force, never satisfied my appetite to really learn electronics. Eventually my brother started working as a nuclear engineer in California. He informed me that the colleges were free to state residents, so I was off to CA in a flash. After sleeping through three semesters of basic electronics and transistors (I didn't know at the time I had apnea) they "sacrificed" half a semester of tube theory and taught us basic digital logic. I found my calling and my life's work.

It is 29 years since graduation and I now know how to apply analog theory for use with microprocessors. I spent most of those years testing and repairing (and a touch of design and coding) of proprietary embedded processor boards for various employers. 'Still haven't laid out a board and had it fabbed, but I'm getting there. Mostly I buy development boards and finagle them into my test beds at work. But I did take board layout classes, then laid out board designs using tape and acetate for a few bucks for engineering students and friends.

I'm sitting in a bedroom at this moment up to my eyeballs in test equipment, books, PCs, laptops, assembly and rework equipment. I have one of everything electronic, I just don't remember where I put any of it. And if I ever stop to actually organize all this cr*p, I'll probably find I have TWO of everything!

But I had fun doing it, and I still love it, and, best of all, I get paid to do it!
kenjj
 
audioguru said:
I have boxes full of those old magazines. Their projects usually had errors that were fixed in later issues. I would like to get rid of the magazines, do you think they have any value?
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There are two methods to rid yourself of them:

1. Donate to a library as often they are looking to complete or add to their collection of electronics periodicals. Especially the college or university libraries that offer EE majors.

2. Sell them at a hamfest/computer flea market. Hams and electrohead geeks buy them upfairly quickly. Wait... because I have a collection of them from over the years, does that mean I'm an electrohead geek?
 

From what I have seen so far...yes!
 
Astrophysists son

As the son of a scientist in Alaska in the 60s I had alot of what I call dinner table physics. I used to go to Poker Flats (Fairbanks, Ak) with my dad and watch rocket launches for his infrasonic experments. All the technicians and engineers used to give me the "old" electronics to play with. I now am the Chief technician for a local government in Portland Oreogn. Never went to management so I could keep my fingers in the sparks. When the wife is looking for me she finds me in the garage building a robot or automated telescope controller. I am so lucky to have a hobby that also pays well.

Aaron
 
When I whas 4 years old i took the dust cleaner apart in a way that it could not be reasembled anymore

my parents where not that amused but it went a bit more hard core 3 years later when the local electricity company came by for the 3rd time in a month to replace the main (sealed) fuse of the house

I alwaysed blamed the welding machine of my dad but that whas not realy the case

started to try make something from junkyard stuf which failed in the begining always but at the aged of 9 I did boght the electronics magazines from my pocket money and learned my self some basics

than at 13 years old I took a break regarding electronics as the mopets and motors came into my reach at 17 I had my first car (no driving licence at that time) and played with that

19 years old I started building speakers and jumped into the theory of it and liked it very much

electronics came back into my life and tried to combine it with the other things I learned

jumped into repairing TV and eventualy did that for a job for about 3 years

it's still a hobby although I do combine it still with some work related projects to solve certain things

my problem now with electronics is that since I have a child I prefer to play with him and don't have that much time to do electronics or overhauling motorbikes

I still try to incorporate some of the things into my work (but its actualy trying to do your hobby in working ours) so the boss is happy and I am also.

Robert-Jan
 
When I was in year 3 or 4 (this is the UK school system, year 3 and 4 = 2nd and 3rd grade) we were given a battery, two wires and a buzzer. First person to make the buzzing noise won. I won and ever since then I've held an interest in electronics. I started hacking about with electronics around age 12-13 and I'm still doing it now at the ripe old age of 15 .

My dad also used to work in electronics (to start with most of the parts I used were "borrowed" from him) which may have contributed to my interest, but I've been completely self-taught and I could probably teach him a few things

I'm studying in secondary school (year 10, final year of GCSEs) with plans to go onto sixth form and university but I'm not sure what subjects I want to study there.
 
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I won't label myself a pro. I started in high school grade 8, by building a kit (with the worst solder joints youve ever seen) and melting holes through a plastic enclosure for the led's, by using my soldering iron :O

A few years later I started working at a tv/microwave/hifi repair shop, and the chaps there taught me alot. After school I started programming (my current career) and electronics fell away, rotted... Only a few months ago, I started picking things up again and will hopefully do my radio license (ZR then ZS) in the next year or so...

I can do nothing other than envy you guys working in this field for a living, going up to repeaters, etc, you are lucky.
 
Pffft! We're lucky, you say...

I came to California to take advantage of the free colleges. I could do this only because my brother was already here working as a Nuclear Engineer for the Navy. But he was never entirely happy with his field. While going to high school he took a programming course. He'd come home with shoe boxes filled with punched cards. While I was in college and living with him, he was buying programmable calculators and poring over them every free moment. He started to teach himself LISP and C. In my last semester he dropped $1600 on a SOL20 computer kit and I assembled it for him. He got wicked good at slinging code on that thing and its 8080 processor.

I noticed a strange thing happening after I graduated. Every time we went to a computer or electronics store, I ended up in the corner alone while the store owners and sales types took my brother aside and deluged him with offers for software work. They all had programs to sell in the store that potential customers said they would buy "if only it did X", and we ended up getting a lot of free 'toys' and software because my brother could "read" the source and knew enough math stuff and coding tricks to make it jump through the requested hoops.

He eventually taught himself UNIX and then the headhunters started calling. He quit his engineering job to work for an outfit in Berkeley, CA. Funny: mom drove him to work and back for a year before he brought himself to believe the job was actually his and he got his license. Then his outfit said they were opening an office in Europe and was he interested? Those four years of German in college really paid off. He was angling for Munich, while they were talking about London, which he didn't care for. UNIX was taking off, and was a hot ticket in Europe. But then a top code writer left. His supervisor called him in to tell him, as their best coder left in house, they were keeping him there. He just glowered at him, slapped his security badge on the guy's desk, and said,"I can write code for you in Munich or not at all." He was scouting offices to rent in Germany three weeks later.

The smartest electronics engineer I ever worked for told me he envied the software writers. His designs went from napkin drawings to shippable products in 12 to 18 months, then he was shown the door. The software types were flogging the drivers and code right up to shipping time, then writing bug fixes and enhancements long after the hardware guys had done their part.

Do NOT be anxious to give up your programming, OK?
kenjj
 
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