S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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Rich Feldman
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S F Bay area "hamfest" today

Post by Rich Feldman »

Today is the season opener for monthly electronics flea market in Cupertino, California.
http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/

One of the things that used to make the USA great was having a Radio Shack store in every small city. Now, as that mismanaged company circles the drain, I have to go to the flea market to get a rotary potentiometer.
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Rich Feldman
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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With no time to prepare as a seller, I went as a buyer and took it easy.
The unexpected treasure was a bank of long power resistors, 100 K ohms each, handy as a HV ballast or load.
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It cost me $10, with a dual potentiometer joystick thrown in. One of the 10 resistors is open, though it's not obvious why or where. For curiosity's sake, I'd like to locate the defect nondestructively. Whether or not that's successful, we can see if the open resistor conducts when connected to an energized NST. :-)
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Richard Hull
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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Those resistors in the wattage and ohm range shown are extremely rare now. You got a great deal. I buy every such resistor I run across as long as they are over 50 watts, over 50k ohms and wire wound.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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The Turbo not taken

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Another month, another hamfest, and again no time to sell.
I bought a few little things, incl. a cool resistor-substitution box.
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The bipolar meter is for electromagnet power supply.
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On the way out, I saw a turbomolecular pump for the first time at this venue. Seller didn't know much about them, and was asking $200 to start with. Wisely passed it up, since in 2 or 3 years I haven't got around to trying my little diffusion pump or my Danielson Tribodyn turbo drag unit.
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The 500 kV power supply was a module or two short of a set.
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Lots of things to look at, including flat wire wound the hard way.
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Richard Hull
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

Post by Richard Hull »

Thanks for the pix of the hamfest goodies. More folks should use this venue. I have a "files post" about hamfesting. I go to about 10 each year. I have posted many goodies in images over the years here. You never know what you will find. Last month at Raliegh, NC I scored 3 Nim bin modules @ $10.00 each! They worked perfectly.

Now I tend to go as a seller, but also have a friend who goes with me to mind my sales when I want to roam about, buying. Recent aquistions attached.

Variac 220 volt 8 amp only $10.00....Had borken brush. Fixed with new brush assembly Works great.
lithium-Ion batts new in packs Bought a lot of 15 of 3 different sizes/mAh ratings. $20.00
GM counter $40.00 did'n't work......... replaced 2 Germanium low gain transistors. Works fine now.
Solar panel 20 volt 400ma....$30.00 Large microammeter $3.00

Richard Hull
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Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

Post by Andrew Robinson »

Darn, wish you had pinged me Richard. Totally forgot to look into dates for Raleigh hamfest. I said last year I would pay attention and go. Oh well :(
I can wire anything directly into anything! I'm the professor!
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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There is another nice one at Cary nearby real soon if it already hasn't happened. Don't remember the date.

Sorry you missed Raleigh. There were two regulars there from UNC. That is who I bought the NIM modules from. They also had three NIM bins for $75.00 each. A bit dirty, but in good operating condition. If I didn't have 6 bins already I might have been tempted to buy.

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Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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I can wire anything directly into anything! I'm the professor!
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Rich Feldman
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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Last Saturday I took a seller's space for the first time in 2015. Got a ton of stuff permanently out of the garage, into the hands of people who want it. Including everything left from my BDI Auction pallet load, and from a technology-rich Free pile in front of somebody's house a couple weeks ago. It's amazing how many things flea marketers will take, when marked $1 or free. Got $15 for the dusty old 12 VDC to 400 Hz dynamotor, and for the 8-foot long cylindrical PV array made for use with a concentrator.
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Refused to bargain on other items when would-be buyer foolishly walked away from an already-good deal.
My first sale was an airborne 16mm movie camera relic, in teardrop-shaped housing, for $20. It had been stored in boxes since high school in the 1970's, when I once ran some B&W footage through it (and developed the film in buckets). Buyer was still there when a regular pulled into the next seller space. Newcomer offered him $50 for the same item, which was rejected.

I bought just one item, for $5, from an immediate neighbor. A 1-torr Baratron that runs on 120 volts AC.
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It might well work, unless it's missing a board for that edge connector. Are the reference vacuum seals and getter supposed to last a lifetime?

Later that weekend I filled 3 recycling toters and 2 garbage toters with other garage stuff. Soon there will be space to make things again. :-)
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

Post by Richard Hull »

Good deal on the Baratron. I had one of the exact same item. It was shot and never worked. I do not think the board is necessary and may have been a calibration thingy.(factory).

The guy who would know is Steve Hansen he worked for that company for years and is now retired. He runs the Bell Jar website. give him a shout.

Hamfests are a number one hunting ground for all manner of goodies not necessarily ham related!

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Low voltage plasma pictures

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Just moved mercury-vapor rectifier story and picture to new thread with a better title.
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Blasts from the past

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I was still biting on gauze, where my #13 bicuspid had been at breakfast time, when Allyn took me to a mid-week estate sale advertised as having some vintage electronics. She got to meet my tube-dealing friend Bob, who was there long ahead of us. She got a bunch of Tupperware, and I got...
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The Energine, in nearly full can, is a nonflammable spot remover/cleaning fluid we used to get at the grocery store or drugstore. Smells kind of like carbon tetrachloride, but eventually had its turn to be practically banned. http://www.exponent.com/files/Uploads/D ... _Vol_3.pdf

The Staticmaster brush had 50 microcuries of polonium 210 when new, in Dec. 1965. The alpha particle generator ionized air, making it much easier to remove electrostatically bound dust from plastic surfaces. Back then, dust-sensitive surfaces called "records" and "film" were found in every household. My specimen became nonradioactive, Po-210-wise, in 1982 or 1983 when the last atom from original source decayed.

Staticmaster brand brushes & stationary ionizers, with their polonium sources, are still made today.
The biggest one in the lineup seems to have 23.1 millicuries.
http://transforming-technologies.com/do ... -sheet.pdf
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

Post by Rich Feldman »

Notice for Daniel Wen, and other readers in SF Bay Area.
This year's penultimate Electronics Flea Market in Cupertino, CA will happen early tomorrow, August 8. For information, see link at top of this thread.
I won't have a seller's space, but will be there looking for pogo pins & anything else that happens to leap out.

Got no pictures from last month's tiny haul. It included two 5-amp mercury vapor rectifiers, one of which works. Here is a picture of the good 866-A from earlier in the year, featured in a thread called "10 Volt Plasmas".
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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I love those old 886 mercury fire bottles! the A's usually look just like the one shown. (Canned cathode) I have some of the early non A's and the naked coiled or even a ribbon filament and a thin flat plate has a vabulous glow. I made a quick and dirty demo block for show and tell at one of the HEAS gatherings. When cool, the mercury is condensed out and often leaves a mirror finish on the tube of winds up as beads of blobs on the glass or in the bottom of the tube.

On warming up, the beads start to evaporate and mirror up the tube envelope until the heat increases even more and then the tube goes transparent. The voltage can then be applied and that fabulous blue glow fills the naked ribbon heater-plate space. In college, one of the final exam questions in industrial electronics was "what is the ARC DROP of a mercury vapor tube...Explain how this occurs.

The voltage is offically 13 volts. We know the reason why being fusor guys.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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Honestly, Mom, I just got three things at the flea market! There is an open-air voltage multiplier from which many of the high voltage capacitors, divider string resistors, and diode sticks have been cannibalized. Looks like it still has three of the main capacitors and 5 of the diode sticks.
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Then there's a 30-0-30 amp meter and a mercury fixed-temperature thermostat. I've wanted one of the latter ever since admiring them controlling HVAC on Caltrain commuter rail cars (the old ones by Nippon Sharyo). The rising mercury in a glass capillary directly completes an electric circuit. Nothing to ever wear out, stick, or get out of calibration. Tilting and vibration don't change the setpoint.
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I just spent about an hour in nearly fruitless search of the Internet for more about these. They have one among the collected relics of EDSAC, a very early British computer. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/relicd? ... &class=any U. S. Patents as early as 1760081 (Parks, 1930) present "improvements" to get around the non-adjustability. Have other readers used, serviced, or collected these gadgets?
All models are wrong; some models are useful. -- George Box
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

Post by Jerry Biehler »

I drove down there two weeks ago to drop off a pickup load of laser stuff and I picked up a couple old Airco Temescal CV-14 chassis to try and make work to drive the e-beam gun in my vacuum chamber. The power supply is supposed to put out up to -10kv at up to 1.4amps regulated by a 3CW20000A7 tube, unfortunately no tube. One of the transformers, about 305lbs:

ImageAirco Temescal CV-14 transformer by Jerry Biehler, on Flickr

They seem to run fine on a VFD, I was mildly surprised.

I did shoot this time lapse while I was down there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmlUDirLpVU
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Rich Feldman
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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Here we go again! The swap meet begins in about 3 hours, as dawn breaks for another warm sunny day in Cupertino. I won't be going to sell, but might try to sneak in some stuff to make a FREE pile in some vacant space.
fm002.jpg
http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/schedule
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

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Ye olde Cupertino swap meet this month will be tomorrow, July 9.
Most vendors are in place before 7 am. Packing to leave starts before 11 am.

I'm planning to visit by bicycle, with a friend, to reduce the temptation to acquire large treasures. Last month I found a couple of EG&G triggered spark gaps with attached trigger transformers on a $2 table.

At the June meet, along with the usual suspects I ran into Adam Munich. He's a young fellow who popped in at fusor.net in 2012 to discuss his plutonium detector full of helium-3 tubes. viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6281
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Re: S F Bay area "hamfest" today

Post by Rich Feldman »

Next year I'll put this thread under Trading Post instead of Images du Jour.
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The penultimate meet of 2016 http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/ comes next weekend. I will get a seller space & use it to get rid of stuff. Come say hello if you're in the area.

In June I bought a couple of music box movements, complete with power springs and spinning regulators.
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Also some EG&G triggered spark gaps, in modules with trigger transformers already wired up, from a $2-per-item table. Took a picture of this inexpensive motorized X-Y table, for some contemporary forum thread.
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In July I bought a 14 volt DC generator for pedal-power experiments, for $5, and carried it home in a bicycle pannier. It will complement a 14 volt automobile alternator, in fact they have similar size pulleys for v-belts. The generator seems to have only two electrical terminals, so I don't know how its output voltage is regulated.
All models are wrong; some models are useful. -- George Box
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