Category: ham

I replaced a single cap in my HP-8116A, and it’s in great shape again!

[20210305] Today an interesting batch of Nichicon capacitors arrived from nl.mouser.com. I needed a replacement cap for the repair of my HP-8116A and decided to start collecting a stock of electrolytic capacitors. I know, I know, shelf life and all… But waiting two weeks in lockdown for a single elco is no fun either…

Today’s batch is (my first) from Nichicon; of course… Temperature rating 105 °C.

Right after my last walk to the waste container and while backing up content and pushing it to this web site, I can now declare myself a paperless HAM. Over the past three weeks or so, I got rid of all physical documentation on instruments, HAM gear, ancient projects or just plain thoughts put on paper. Replaced by endless bit arrays either obtained by scanning or by downloading.

I must have scanned over a thousand pages and downloaded tens of documents (the latter to prevent me from having it to scan myself). Highlights (if you will) of the scanning activity were service manuals for the Yeasu FT-208R and the Rohde&Schwarz ESH-3 Test Receiver.

It feels as if I finished something big and important, despite the fact that I still stubbornly prefer reading and studying from paper, and prefer pencil and paper for designing or, say, just doing some (simple) math. But with dozens of high-end (yet old) instruments, a couple of transceivers and dozens of past projects, it is just impossible to have all documentation physically at hand in a small hobby loft. It would take fifty A4 binders, and that’s a conservative estimate. And in this case, it is either all or nothing for me, and all digital it has become. So I finally got rid of the final ten or so binders. At last; I should have done this years ago :-)…

Remarkably, I was one of the first to purchase a scanner with ADF in order to get rid of the massive amount of personal administration that only grew larger and larger. Likewise, to ditch my Vinyl, CDs, DVDs once they were all ripped. Too bad it took me almost thirty years in total, but this is just one of the last steps towards the fully digital experience my kids and so many of my young colleagues are already accustomed to :-)…

I still have a drawer stuffed with those annoying Safety Instructions and manuals in languages that use complete paintings as characters… And while I’m at it, just above it (it’s a chest of two drawers) reside over a hundred cables and connectors just to remain backwards compatible (you know, including that high-end Monster SCART to RGB patch cable you thought would finally solve all your video incompatibilities for the foreseeable future).

So, still work to do, but I’m almost there (‘story of my life’)…