Electronics

Tinkering success!

I cobbled together a good power supply for the iron that Mark Balliet gave me! I was having a hard time finding a barrel jack on a thrift store transformer that matched it, but eventually I bought a cheap little 7.5 volt, 3 watt wall wart with the right barrel, a Sharp power supply from something-or-other that provides almost 6 amps at 12 volts, and soldered the cord from the little one into the big one. I had to resort to a little saw on my multi-tool to get the little one open, but the sharp is in a much bigger package with press-fit snaps and screws and opened much more straight-forwardly. And actually went back together, unlike the other one!

How did I use the soldering iron without a supply for it? I found another wall wart with a jack that didn't actually insert much at all into the iron's receptacle, and doesn't provide near as much power as the new one does, but it made just enough of a connection to make it work until the job was done.

More about the Heathkit I'm trying to fix ( behind the cut )

My Great-Grandfather

Kate's recent comment and my electronics tinkering reminded me of great-grandfather and his ham radio interests. Some years ago I wondered if I could find his call sign, but cursory searching did not turn it up. I looked again today, and then Miriam did some looking too. Together we found him!

She found this Caltech Newsletter: https://campuspubs.library.caltech.edu/2401/1/1982_07_16_04.pdf
Page 8 mentions my great-grandfather, Hubert Woods', leading role in Caltech's amateur radio club receiving it's first call sign, 6UE, in 1923. He got his bachelor's degree from CalTech (I have his physical diploma!).

Looking in HathiTrust, I'm pretty sure I found him in the US Department of Commerce's publication of 1920-23 amateur radio stations! It's on page 82 of this document: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3221805...

It's interesting that there are two Hubert Woods. One address, the 1300 block of San Pasqual in Pasadena, is on the CalTech campus. It might make sense if that was the Caltech ham club's call sign, but it's different. I wonder if the Glendale address was where he lived. Maybe my family knows where he lived in California? So in 1923, Caltech had 6UE, and 6ID and 6BS were assigned to Hubert Woods.

And then Miriam found a letter he wrote to the editor of the RSGB Bulletin, which was the Journal of the Radio Society of Great Britain. That's on page 400 of this scan of the 1965 journal:

https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/RadCom/60s/RadCom-1965-06.pdf

He was writing from Northfield Illinois, which is consistent with him having worked for Portland Cement at the time. His callsign at that point was W9IK. I think that might be because many (all?) ham licenses were revoked during World War 2, and hams got new ones after.

I believe he operated in Mexico after retiring and moving to Guadalajara. I wonder if he had a different callsign there.

But anyway, it's really awesome to finally find his callsigns!