reuben

too many shocking tales :o lol, I was told to fix a stink in a church bathroom once, it seemed to be coming from an outlet, turned out a mouse had chewed it's way into the plastic outlet box and gotten fried. i just went to town to radio shack to get a new multimeter, as the old one kind of became useless due to what looked like a broken tip on the needle pivot. I'm a bit ole fashoned and was just gona get an old style analog kind, but the only one like that was too featureless, not enough ranges, ended up getting the best digital one they had cuz it had so many neat fetures i can make use of, it'll help me make something useful out of all the electronic junk and spare parts laying around. :) now i gotta go read the instructions, sometimes i know a lot about how these fancy gadgets work but then can't figure out how to operate them.

the electrical system here dates from the days of the rural electrification administration :o it was actually early 60's before they got it to this valley. I've blowed many a fuse, even the hunnered amp ones. and several have makeshift replacements. I keep thinking I'm going to build a shop and get a 400 amp system put in it, take the power off the old house and tear it down. Maybe it'll get done next year ::) old house dates from before 1900, getting a bit rotten and leaning. one whole half of the house was on one fuse, along with two rooms upstairs and the wire running to shed out back. something shorted out and blew it once, probably a mouse chewing on the wire in a wall. don't know who put all that on one line, but it was 5 times too much.

ham radio is the place to play with repeaters,

I did notice that, the circuit i have runs at several hundred Hz with a lot of frequency change along with the pulse width change, i ran a tape recorder motor with it, it ran fine from 0 to full speed, then put a speaker on it to hear what it's doing. I'll try this one and see if it does better.

well, yah, i always have too many ideas, and not enough time or money to persue them, do have several inventors in my ancestry. not that arangment, lol! just using the small single phase as a starter for the 3 hp 3 phase motor to serve as phase converter. a 3 phase motor will run on 1 phase if it's set to spinning first, but only at 2/3 power, but run as an idler, (not driving anything) it will generate the other two phases, so can connect another 3 phase motor to it and it will start and run normally. My uncle has done that with 40 hp motors in a production shop. I worked there for a couple months once, in the morning I'd start the big phase converter motor with a rope. we currently have a 10hp 3 phase motor on a grain mill, using a 3 hp 3 phase motor for a converter that we start manually, (wrap a rope around the shaft and spin it while flipping the switch on) the 3 is a little small, makes the 10 start a bit weak, but it starts if there's no load on it. Somewhere I came across a recommendation of using a minimum of 50% of the driven hp for the converter, and that's for no load starting. For loaded starting it was 100% or more. ever hear of killing viruses electronically? it's been documented, I've seen video taken through microscope of that happening, it could wipe out deseases big time, but it's too cheap and easy, they won't use it cuz it'd eliminate a lot of treatments they're making a lot of $$ on. guess it's left up to non doctors to play with. RT

that is a very broad field, have to specify a little more what yer interested in. I used to do a lot of robbing old TV's of parts and making simple shortwave radios, etc. then there's all kinds of various communication types and methods one can play with. like modulating a laser beam with audio for example, then picking it up with a solar cell and demodulating it.

ahhh!!! thanks! that's a better circuit than i the one i have, I'll use that to drive the little power transistors that drive the really big ones that run the 15hp forklift motor that i installed in a subaru wagon to make a HE car. RT

just signed on, was wondering the web and came across this place. first i better say a little bout who i be, I'm a ham as of 25+ yrs ago, A class , n4isf, was krazy over electronics and studied basic radio quite throughly up to about 20 yrs of age, (i'm 40 now) (still have a good size collection of electronic junk to pull spare parts from.) then we bought land in the hills of tn and i drifted into logging/sawmilling, horses, agriculture, etc. got backhoe and dozer and been doing jobs with them, but now i'm backing off on those off the farm jobs and persuing getting a production greenhouse started and some land cleared for pasture. Now i have a little project to persue. I need to turn on a 7.5 hp 3 phase moter with a thermostat, (blower to cool a greenhouse) and I'm not going to buy an expensive contactor to do it. ($350) as that would only do part of what needs doing anyway, because I only have 1 phase power to run it. My tenative design; The therm. contacts will turn on a transistor powered relay which will turn on a small 1 phase motor, belt drive starting a 3hp or larger 3 phase motor for a phase converter, a delay circuit will then turn on the power to the 3 phase motor and interupt the power to the 1 phase motor at the same time, then a second delay circuit will turn on some large relays(by way of a small one) to turn on the big blower. I'm thinking of trying ford/AMC starter relays for the big relays, but they are intermitant duty, so i need to do a current limiting resistor/capacitor setup to prevent the coils from over heating. i never heard of using 12 V starter relays for 240V but i don't see any reason it won't work, the coil is normally isolatable from the main contacts. I pick up motors from the local scrap yard for $0.15 a pound, some are new or next to it. (that's where the big blowers came from, i have 2, a 7.5hp and a 20hp, the 20 will go on a big double size greenhouse later, and they are new, never been hooked up, found them sitting there last year.) PS: another little project my brother and i have been playing with off and on, installing an electric forklift motor in a compact car, we got forklift parts from the scrap yard too, and going to hook up the big transistors on the control board to drive it, with a 555 ic variable pulse width osciliator driving them. run it on 4 normal size deepcycle marine batterys, going to add a 13 hp honda engine to drive a couple welding size alternators to provide average power. (one of which also came from the s yard.) Then there's another device in the works we want to add to it, I've played with them in the past, my neighbor has too, and he had one working for awile in excess of 20 yrs ago. the best way to tell ya what it is, is to read this 25 pg. story; http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:GZX8vvELR4EJ:byronw.www1host.com/files/Gone%2520to%2520China,%2520AC%26theFIVS605.pdf+T76+aluminum&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 my projection of expected mpg for the car is around 400-480. a future project still in dream stage is a ton truck with same setup, should be able to easily get 150 with one, it would use either 84 or 112 hp EV motors, (3 or 4 28's) and probably 20 batterys, with a small car engine running on a "fuel processor" generating around 40 KW. one neat thing about the hybred EV, plug in cables and it's a DC welder. oh well!! gabatchya suhmore later. RT