what diy stuff did you do as a kid?

RF · Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:25 pm Post subject:

Lol! Fun thread.
The battery of the month card was great - Kept the projects powered up when I had no $$...including what we called "Nasty Boxes" Which I would leave lying around (innocently!).
A battery or two, a small electric motor (or buzzer) and a mercury switch in series with the secondaries of a transformer....then the primaries were routed to the outside of the enclosure to metal plates or contacts.... Twisted Evil

I made alot of Estes rockets - I lost my first one (X-Ray) on its first launch also. C6-5 engine on a windy day as I recall. The Big Bertha ended up in the schoolyard Elm tree.

LaFayette electronics was a great source of parts, too.

Radio Shack - "You've got questions, we've got batteries"

cappy2112 · Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 10:23 pm Post subject:

Danno Gee Ray · Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1351 Location: Telford, PA USA

Where I grew up, we had a guy who drove an old mail truck filled with rocket kits, motors, etc to the local elementary school on summer saturdays. He had a huge multi-station launch pad he would set up. He held contests for best looking new rocket, highest flight, landing closest to the pad, all sorts of stuff. Prizes would be the coolest new rocket kit, or enough engines for five launches, or even a one rocket launch pad of your own!

One kid won the closest to the pad by taking the parachute out and gluing the top on his rocket. He had changed the center of gravity of the unit so that it would always fall nose down, (added a little washer for weight. He took extra care to make sure the fins were aligned just so when gluing them up. He also cut off the engine retainer clip so the engine would eject when the parachute charge was actuated. Lastly he painted the tiny machine with neon green and orange paint so it would be easier to see.

On a very still day he entered the closest to the pad contest. Rocket launches and proceeds to go out of sight, meanwhile back on the ground, this rather attractive mother of some other budding NASA engineer is sitting on a chase lounge reading her book a few feet from the pad. We all hear this unmistakeable svit sound followed by a tiny thud and a scream. This guys rocket had come back down and went through the chase lounge webbing into the ground. It buried itself about four inches into the dirt right under this very hysterical and and increasingly angry woman. Seems the damned rocket had missed her fun zone by about six inches or so. Well, he won the closest to the pad contest (whereupon the rules were changed to ensure parachutes were always used), also won the altitude contest for the day. He got that rocket banned from ever being launched again, and damned near got his ass beat by one rather unhappy former casual observer. She finally relented and calmed down after much profuse apologizing and assurances he had had no idea such a thing could have happened. Got my ass beat after she tracked down and called my folks too.

Another incident occurred when a kid and his father showed up with this glorious looking Saturn 5 multi-stage monster that had obviously taken nearly a lifetime of love to build. It was magnificent looking! Well, it gets put on the launch pad and as the whole pre launch process is drawn out to increase the drama for everyone present, the kid standing next to me starts to back up a little bit. I told him not to worry, it's safe you know, this guy knows what he's doing. He looks at me with a funny look and starts telling me the story of his birthday present.

See his dad loved rockets, bought him the mother of all kits for his birthday present. Cleared out a whole section of the garage just for building it, set up a special table and all. He was only allowed to work on the project with his dad present, which it turns out amounted to handing him a tool or two. He had tried to sneak in and work on HIS present by himself, got caught and was punished severely. He began to hate that rocket! Soon he had dreams of crushing it, stomping on it, but then it came to him...His uncle had left some M-80's in the garage from the previous 4th of July celebration, and the kid knew where they were.

As he was telling me this, he was still backing up. Having my interest peaked, I began to see the wisdom of this, and joined him. Anyway, he told me he found the M-80's and packed them into the various stages of the rocket, right above the engines. He admitted he had no idea what would really happen, but he figured it was going to be "bad". I concurred, and backed up some more for insurance purposes. Thankfully, the "Rocket man" as we called him had increased the safety zone around the launch pad More for dramatic effect than anything else, or so he thought. Ten, Nine, Eight....Three...Two...One...Lift off!

This behemoth starts to climb from the pad, and it was magnificent, stately in its struggle against mighty gravity. Then about twenty feet above the pad it happened. It settled for an instant, then in a blaze of unbelievable hell it blew up. In an instant it was gone. My ears were ringing worse than when I'd gone shooting with my dad and forgot to wear ear plugs. Oh my gawd! The look of sheer shock on that kids face was almost as good as the sound of his old man falling to his knees in tears. Next thing I hear is the sound of beating feet. He was on the run, and I must admit to being in awe of that poor kid. The balls to do that! The price we knew he was going to pay.

His dad caught him of course (about a couple of miles away, still running). Grounded him, took away his next birthday, etc. etc. They both were banned from the rocket club for life. The dad had to pay for a new Mega- platform launch pad, as the original was all but destroyed in the miss-hap. A few weeks later almost all of us were back at the elementary school whispering about the last "Big One".

Eventually the "Rocket man" stopped coming, so we stopped coming, and the little missiles of our dreams flew no more. A few years ago I was launching rockets with my kids, and they never understood why I backed up so far before they went off. Just a reflex I guess.

pcp2020 · Joined: Dec 25, 2007 Posts: 40 Location: boston

awesome rocket story. i launched a ton of model rockets. all my paper route money went to buying engines. and of course i would try to stuff the biggest engine into the smallest rocket. i still have a few left. my brother and i used to take his kids to launch them from time to time (until they discovered video games). it was always good for a laugh.

fonik · Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 7:13 am Post subject:

my first electronic DIY project was a television built from LEGOs. it was showing movies that i painted on a paper strip. this paper strip was coiled on a drum and moved through the LEGO TV by a totally fancy winder mechanism.
this TV absorbed me for days... (i was about 5-7 IIRC)

Funky40 · Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2008 2:35 pm Post subject:

I started DIY with age of 12.
i built Radio Controlled sailplanes.
after 2 Years i had all those Aerodynamik and constructing knowledge and begun to costruct those for myself .

so with age 15 we begun to build our own Skateboards.
Those 10" wide ramp skates which were not available here.
My Friends brought them allways from the states or we just went up to amsterdam to get them........

Our DIY Skates were one third lighter then those you can buy.
I just built two or three.
My Friend who was also into that Rocket stuff built many ones. ( btw.: nice rocket storys )
Later upcoming local small DIY Skatecompanies built their skates after our way of building.( stii today ! our time was some 25 Years ago )

i also built a positiv/negativ mold for laminating snowboards, but i never finished one.
That was with age 20.
That Days i was allready to deep into smoking pot,
and my DIY activitys were to rolling joints and building any kind of Pipes.

with electronics i begun exactly 18 Months ago.
I started with Zero knowledge and experience,
but my experience from that old Days building sailplanes helped me a lot.
Because i know that i just have to build....... just do it.
all those very perfect sailplanes i contsructed were never built or finished ! only those where i just did it, and where i accepted the unperfectness
so my building style is now somewhat chaotic, i just do it, or i do not ....

DIY is great, allways good People there !

Zodiak · Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 4:10 pm Post subject:

I was hooked on synthesizers since I was about 14.

I couldn't afford to buy one (a VCS3 was 3 months salary for my Dad) and as I was already interested in electronic gadgets I decided to build one.

I started with a couple of osciallators in tobacco tins feeding a ring modulator, then a VCA and strange home brew envelope shaper, that made all sorts of interesting waves and shapes and fed into an old wem copycat tape echo. Very Happy

Not quite the same as the gear I have now but it was definitley more fun and I remember the sounds as being more exciting. I still have the diagrams so I might have a go a re-creating it as it was back then. All I need now is a handful of germanium diodes and transistors!! Wink

Tronato · Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 11:27 am Post subject: Stereo Chord EGG

Hello friends,

Around the seventies I lived in Venezuela and had a friend that repaired Avionics at the local Caracas private airport. Using the system he used to order stock parts I bought from Paia the following kits: a Gnome, a Surf Synthesizer, a Wind Synthesizer, a Sequencer, a Vocal Zapper, a Stereo Chord EGG and a few power supply modules. I also bought from the now dissapeared Bullet Electronics a kit that used the SN76477 chip to make all sorts of noises.

They all worked fine except I was never able to make the Gnome's ribbon controller work the way it should so I just made random noises with the sequencer but it was fun all the same. All that stuff is in Venezuela (unless my mother threw it all away, which I suspect she did, after all it's been 18 years since I went first to work in Madrid and am now in Miami).

Since the Stereo Chord EGG has been mentioned here (I was the one who offered State Machine to buy his) I would like to express or propose the following:

I have 3 MOSTEK MK50240 Top Octave Generators.

I am very interested in rebuilding the EGG but it has been impossible to find a PCB with Paia since it has long been discontinued. They did however provide all the information regarding the EGG that appears at the beginning of this thread.

I tried to use LochMaster 3.0 to design a perforated board for it but after a couple of weeks there was a local power failure and I lost all the work because I had the demo version which had the save option disabled. I almost had a heart attack, not to mention I was extremely Grumpy for a couple of days. Since this is the only project I have in mind and don't plan to do any more I don't justify buying the complete version. I don't know enough electronics to even think of designing new circuits!

I then tried to use the PCB Express software but frankly it is not as user friendly as LochMaster and lost my patience after about a week.

Yersterday after reading a thread about Futurlec PC boards I discovered that there are other PCB design softwares like Eagle and Protel as well as Gerber which are the ones Futurlec requires to make the PCBs. I'll download them and see how it goes.

In the meantime, if anyone here has a solution for my PCB design problem (like lots of experience with any of these softwares) and provides or helps me with it I'll gladly send him (or her) 1 Top Octave Generator (MK50240) and 1 of the 3 PCBs after Futurlec manufactures them. (For free, of course).

Does this sound reasonable to any of you?

By the way State Machine, thanks for the EGG demo mp3... It brought back very good memories... I'll PM you regarding Stamp Collecting!

One last thing: where can I find 4 legged 5 mm Tri-color common anode RGB LEDs in the US?

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

TRON

Dave Kendall · Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:53 pm Post subject:

The first thing I remember building was an output board for an 8:2 mixer back in the mid 70s, that I'd acquired nearly completed in a case, but with a board missing. I was around 10, and my uncle bid for, and got the mixer and a pedal steel guitar, at an auction held in his local cattle market. According to my Uncle, who was a regular, nothing like that had ever appeared before or after. That was the only time I ever went to the auction with him...Fate, or something.......
I sold the pedal steel for £3 straight after the auction - the same price as the lot.... *groan* .... I so wish I hadn't.......

Each channel had a gain pot (and IIRC a 2 or 3 pos. slide switch for input gain/impedance ??) , HF EQ and LF EQ (maybe a mid EQ ?)pots with a fader, panpot and possibly an aux send pot. I'm pretty sure there was a return input socket.
There were 2 boards for the stereo output - each with a 5 band fixed frequency EQ using what I *think* were choke coils??. Dad, who had built valve radios as a teenager back in the 40s, managed to get replacements (from Siemens?). For each band, I seem to remember having to wind a defined number of turns of wire around a core that went inside a (ferrite?) housing. Then the missing pcb was etched - the traces were quite large, so I just copied them one by one on to the copper using a marker pen . I was into scratch-building model tanks back then, so was quite into fiddly little things. To my surprise it worked when assembled with help from Dad. But it sounded like shite. Very hissy, and one day when working on it, touched something I shouldn't have and got a capacitor discharge or mains shock or something. It actually burned a bit of the end of my finger.....

Any UK guys remember any mixer project vaguely like that, choke coils and all? I guess the thing was probably a kit or project from a UK magazine, as Dad and I must have found some info on how many wire turns per coil were needed for each freq. band......

I got an EDP Wasp some time after that, and a hohner pianet a while after, so building circuits or models wasn't quite as much fun as playing the synth in a really crap punk band, whilst trying vainly to impress girls, who suddenly had become a lot more interesting.....

It was a pair of old circuit kits from Maplin - the NE571 based noise gate, and a SSM 2044 VCF board that I found in the attic back around 2003-2004 that got me googling for DIY synthy type stuff. Now I'm back to wasting money and time on building circuits, and loving every minute of it.... Very Happy

cheers,
Dave

zonkout · Joined: Oct 12, 2006 Posts: 33 Location: ozztin, teggsitz

Sadly I never built anything when I was younger. I was more into disassembling....

I did however recently acquire a STEREO CHORD EGG.
It is not currently operable and I was considering fixing it based on Paia's description, but hearing the MP3 on this thread makes it a must. It sounds like Brian Eno!

I will let you guys know how once it is up and running.
Thanks to all for sharing the information. The EGG is an inspiring little board.

widdly · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:02 pm Post subject:

I got started on Funway Electronics from Dick Smith. Dick smith still sells them but I think they have been updated. The old books had lots of pictures of people with big hair and flared pants.

It was divided into three books, the first one had a plastic board that you used screws to hold down the components. The second and third books had kits with PCB's. I could never get the radio's to work but I remember being pretty excited about flashing LED's and the motor-boat sound effects.