The Fifth Wednesday (of any month that has one) is reserved for themed Show ‘n’ Tell Nights. 30 October was another such night…

“100% Recycled” was a tough theme this time, as most of us are more used to buying shiny new gear than repurposing old stuff. There were only 3 displays this time, but many stories, and it was another great evening. A total of 54 points were collected this evening.

The prize for Best Display went to team Nic and Emmanuel VK2EMM, with an electric bicycle built from multiple recovered and recycled components.

Electric bike by Emmanuel VK2EMM

Many bikes are thrown out on the side of the road despite being perfectly repairable. The black bike presented used to be an ebike which was thrashed, shabby paint and all the wires were cut down to the motor or battery! We stripped it down, painted it and put our own motor & 52v battery in it, making it almost twice as powerful as the original!

It features a gear shifter, 1kW motor, 3d printed phone holder, speedometer & odometer (which now reads 600km!), disc brakes and a really nice old fashioned bell. Everything is recycled!

The battery can supply up to 1kW without breaking a sweat, it’s the perfect bike for POTA and SOTA to carry your gear then power your linear!

To everyone who rode the bike after the presentation, it’s at least twice as powerful now. After a chat with someone’s son who was a bike tech we finally decided to fix a weird stall-like issue it had when it took off. One of the phases of the motor was swapped & same for the hall sensors meaning it wasn’t running 100% efficient. Now it can take off about 2x faster and provide some really good torque on it too without stalling & it accelerates MUCH faster, I can get down the street and hit 48 from 0 by the end and before it was a struggle to hit 45 when I had some speed coming back! Oh and it should be more efficient too…. more battery life and power for me!

Recycled looking like New Old Stock by Colin VK2JCC

Storyline from Colin:

In 2015 my wife and I lived for a period of time in Paris. We visited the Musee de L’Armee  the (Museum of the Army). This is also the same building where Napoleon’s Tomb is located. The museum has a number of galleries which are huge.

We chose to explore the French Resistance Gallery which had a number of exhibitions of radios used by the French Resistance known as Spy radios. These were designed to be built in the UK under the direction of Winston Churchill as part of his overall plan to defeat the German Army.

Because these radios were dropped by parachute they ended up being called ” Parsets”.

I took a keen interest in these radios and on my return to Australia decided to try and track down a radio to buy and restore. I found an amateur in Victoria who had an unrestored radio and wanted $10,000 for it. He argued that although over a thousand units had been made, if an operator was found the person was killed and the radio were destroyed.

It is suggested that only a few hundred still exist. I decided to build my own replica and started collecting dials and controls from overseas and locally sourced. I left my name with many opportunity shops to source a suitable case for the house and the radio. No one called me back and it was not until I was visiting Katoomba that I happened to spot a suitable case similar to what I had seen in Paris in a second hand store.

My radio has a second hand SDR radio under the panel which is capable of 5 watts on CW on both 80 and 40m.  The 1942 headset wiring had perished and a new yoke 3d printed and rubberized wire source to bring the headset to life.

As I go portable every Friday Morning I am looking forward to getting my “Spy Radio” on the air.

Colin VK2JCC, AKA Professor Portable

French resistance radio from Colin VK2JCC

Lights by Yves VK2AUJ

Yves’ pastime is to convert old 2D cell torches, old tools or golf buggy batteries that can no longer make the the 18 holes into practical lights/torches.

LED torches made of old tools or incandescent torches, also a 4-Beam brick!

Many 2D cell flashlights have been discarded because of the lack of brightness produced from their incandescent bulb and the high current drain on the batteries. Many 2D cell flashlights have a body of a calibre that can accept a 8xAA battery holder and have a reflector that can accept a 50mm MR16 LED downlight. With a bit of ingenuity, it is possible to convert them.

An old Ryobi sander was also converted into a 3 x MR16 LED torch with a 1,2,3 bulb select button.
… if that sander was still a sander I could at least sand the table!

“Gentleman, we can rebuild her…”

Conspicuous by her absence on the night was Carmel VK2CAR, who allegedly had an accident requiring repair work at Royal North Shore Hospital. While we expect that this is a cover story for another of her famous home-brew projects, at least it gave the other members a fighting chance to win the evening’s competition. But she did offer the following proxy entry, with nods to the popular 1970s science fiction/adventure TV shows The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman:

“Bionic woman makes a comeback. We can rebuild her. We have the 70s technology. Rudy Well’s didactic training has led him to fill her arm with recycled noisy metal cans flowering geranium transistors, wax-impregnated carbon resistors, wet slug tantalums with excessive DC leakage, used dry ‘condensers’, a used triple five, a ZX80 processor with support TTLs and EEPROMs plus a small LEGO motor with springs, gears, levers, and a cassette deck rubber belt with looped analog audio for the ‘sproin-n-n-ng’ sound from arm movement. There’s also a used Arduino Nano from someone’s failed ADX, second-hand titanium screws, an artificial multi-axis coronoidal replacement with rotator head driven by quaternions to avoid gimbal lock, having a plutonium core, and for the damaged foot he has added springs from a 1971 fat Austin Princess.

“Hey Bionic Woman, how do you deal with a dirty worn head?”

Reply: “You’d have to ask the Sixty Dollar Man that question!”

-the artificial titanium rotator ball and screws are real :)”

(All that’s missing is a Rockwell Turbo Encabulator! We all wish Carmel a speedy recovery!)

The next Fifth Wednesday Show ‘n’ Tell Night will be on 29 January 2025.