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I have been working in the electronics field for over 40 years. I have made or modified most of the radio equipment used on my 220 repeater. I have also designed and built dozens of weather station, and earthquake sensing devices, and many electronic alarm circuits, the first of which was back in the early 1970's.

During the 60's 70's and 80's one of the best places to get electronic componets and assemblies at that time was military surplus stores, many were located a few miles from where I grew up in Anaheim California. You could buy electronic devices once used by the military for pennies on the dollar.

I made my rounds once a week to check what new items had arrived. Picking up assemblies that had switches and indicators was my main interest, as I could part out the units and make windspeed and direction indicators, as well as great alarm devices. Windspeed and direction sensors could be made using reed switches and coils found in alot of surplus assemblies.

For example, if you placed small magnetic reed switches at 16 points on a circuit board you could make a very accurate wind direction sensor. the 16 reed switched were linked to small dc lamps which coresponded to the various compass points for N,S,E,W etc. various dc motors could be used to indicate windspeed.

I am sure this is the reason for my interest in Amateur radio, I built many of my first CW transmitters from used parts purchased from surplus stores across the county. Winding coils from copper wire that had been discarded and left for the trashman by a neighbor, and taking vacume tubes, capacitors, resistors etc from old TV's and radios tossed out by the local tv repairman were a great source of parts, and the price was just right.

In the early 1980's I worked for Hughes Aircraft, and Douglas Aircraft, where I wired radar defense systems for the US Government as well as building and wiring commercial aircraft systems. I can say that working in the areospace field was a very rewarding experience. Working with jet aircraft was one of the most interesting jobs, always something to learn. Most of my time was spent wiring the cockpit indicators and metering devices, I think that has been the reason I enjoy working on electronic assemblies to this day.

Below I have added photos of some of the comercial aircraft I worked on while at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, California. I also worked on a few spacecraft assemblies at Hughes Aircraft Company. Some of the best space satellites were designed and built by Hughes. At this time I have not located photos of the spacecraft I worked on , but will add them in the future if I come across them.

After leaving the areospace industry I worked for a number of telephone and cable tv companies doing repair of various systems used in the delivery of cable tv and telephone signals, I also built and installed some of the first wireless cable systems used to deliver tv programming to homes using the microwave band. Do you remember Z Channel? Yes I worked on that system. And to think that today you can watch hundreds of satellite channels with just a 18 inch dish.

After 6 years I left the telecommunications industry. I worked a number of private contractors for San Bernardino County this was in Solid Waste Management, Recycling, etc. I enjoyed the job at first as the boss was a great person to work for and the job was interesting. But good things never seem to last and the company changed hands and the excitement of the job soon faded away. The pay and benefits were the only thing keeping me there, So after being injured on the job I retired and am now working for myself, yes thats right doing what I love most Electronics.

I would like to get a radio net going on my 220 repeater each week, to talk to other radio operators about electronicss , computers, anything related to technology.

If you are a user of the repeater and would like to send me photos of your electronic project or projects you may send it to me via email using the link below, or contact me on the 224.56 repeater, I will be happy to add it to the repeater users page.

Please add your callsign to your message, as my system is set to block spam type messages, and your email will most likely be dumped if you leave out your callsiign

Thanks and 73'sss Mike N6WZZ

DC-9 Military Version.

This one was used as a Flying Hospital, note the red cross on the tail section, also the addition of large cargo doors used for loading full sized hospital beds and other large equipment.

Commercial version of the DC-9. I worked on some of the older DC-9 Models as well as the newer stretched version called the Series 80. I was on hand when the 1000'th DC-9 was produced at the plant in Long Beach, California.

(The photo above was not taken in Long Beach)

Commercial passenger version of the DC-10.

I was in Long Beach, California the day the first DC-10 took to the sky, what a sight it was as the large jumbo jet lifted off the runway in Long Beach.

The jet flew just over Lakewood Blvd, as it gained altitude and turned to the south over the Pacific Ocean.

The photo above is not of the first flight of the DC-10 it is just one of many photos of the DC-10 I had avaliable.

I have a number of electronic projects on the drawing board, I will be adding photos and information as soon as I have the time, I am working to upgrade my 220mhz radio repeater before the winter snows hit here in the San Bernardino Mountains. When the snow begins to fall, most of my outside construction is put on hold until spring.

Below you can see a weather station project that was just completed and is now linked to the repeater Now using touch tones anyone within range of the repeater can link to the weather station and receive up to the second weather information taken at the repeaters location.

Older 386 computer with modifications to the parallel port wired to the DTMF box and the weather station and transceiver.

The neat thing about this design is that the DTMF controller used for the weather station seen in the photo controls only weather station functions as well as fan cooling on the repeater and a few other functions. It is not the main controller, I have a seperate Scom controller used on the repeater.

Modified Davis Weather computer audio card.

This card was made by Davis weather company and was sold under the name of (Weather Talker). It was made to interface a Davis weather station to a telephone line, I modified it by tapping off one of the the onboard relays. I added my own 5 volt dc relay that keys the transceiver when the proper DTMF code is received.

Here are a few photos of a new radio project I have under way....It is a Packet Radio Vhf Telemetry System. When this project is completed you will be able to receive the Outside Air Temp, Windspeed, Wind Direction, Rainfall, as well as the Temp inside the Telemetry Box via Packet Radio

This system is made using a Kantronics Telemetry Unit, with the Wx-Node eprom, a Kantronics Kam Tnc and a Home Brew 2 meter 2 watt low power Vhf transceiver. also in the photo you can see the radiation shield used to protect the outside air temp probe from direct sunlight exposure.

The Windspeed and Direction sensor as well as the Rain sensor are not in these photos, but I will add the photos very shortly.

(Left) photo shows the led volt meter circuit ...And the (Right) photo shows the back of the charger...You can see the 2 fuses installed where once there were scsi cable connectors...

I took a cover from an old blue plastic electronic box and installed it over the old floppy scsi connector holes...The two fuses are for AC line voltage and for DC charge and battery connection...

Also you can see the small vent for the 2 inch cooling fan and the master AC switch to turn off power to the charger...And in the top right of the (Right) photo you can see the ac power connector that was once used for the floppy system...This made for a clean way to get ac power ino the charger...

On the bottom right you can see the Red and Black Positive and Negative battery wires ....So the floppy case made a real cool box for this project...