From time to time, when I have the energy; I like to build stuff!  Because of my M.S., it can take me days to do a project that used to take only a couple of hours, but I still enjoy tinkering around in the shop. (My doctor calls it occupational therapy) Here's where I'll showcase some of my projects.

April 8, 2009

March 3, 2009

Thought it would be nice to build up a giant woodpecker.

I'll add more pictures as the project progresses!

Here he is, mounted on my flag pole. Just need to wire him up and his

head will bob back and forth!

My dogs kept messing up the mini blinds when they ran to the windows.

So, after some prodding from Debbie, I built these grills to keep the dogs off the windows and blinds!

Had been admiring a Botaro sketch I found on the web. So, based on the sketch, I cut out this cute chubby lady to recline in the grass next to the pond. I've always liked the plump female form! (Aren't you happy to know that about me?)

My new antenna tilt over ( design below ) worked very well, but didn't have any "play" in it. So my YL went through a drive through a couple of weeks ago, forgetting to tilt over the antennas and snapped off the 20 meter hamstick antenna.

So, back to the drawing board I went. I cut up, redesigned and then rewelded my mount I had on my pickup truck. The new mount uses a pneumatic cylinder, so if the antenna gets bumped by a low object, it will tilt on its own. I added an air dump valve to the design so that putting the antenna back up just requires a button press. Much easier for my YL to operate now I hope!

October 2, 2008

September 12, 2008

I had a bunch of 2.5 inch disks left over from a paint can holder I made last year. I keept looking at them and looking at them, and saw a dragonfly! So I cut out some feet and wings, tacked it together and put it in the yard. It's 3 feet long with an almost 4 foot wing span!

Antenna Tilt Over System

I took my old Ford Ranger off the road, so it was time to install the HF rig in our mini van. I decided I needed a new tilt over antenna system that was easy to use, since my YL needs to be able to operate it too!

Here's the heart of the system. It's a Ford Mustang power window motor. I chose it at random, based soley on the $12.72 price tag..

The entire shopping list is a follows:

And here for your personal, noncommercial use are the cad (dxf) files if you want to copy my mount for your own use. Just "right click" the link and  "save as" to your hard drive!

   w4sul_tilt_over_mount.dxf

First thing I did was remove the gear from the motor housing, and scan it. This gave me the tooth spacing to cut the tilt-over gear. On the right, you can see a test cut in some scrap to see if everything lines up ok.

Here's the gear in place to make sure it rides on the teeth properly.

Now, I've cut out the basic parts. The motor mount, gear and antenna mount can be seen before I removed them from the plasma cutter. The base is just a piece of 3/4 x 2 inch rectangular tubing. You could also use angle iron, flat plate etc depending on your final mounting needs.

Next, I clamped the motor housing to the mount, and match drilled the mounting holes for the motor.

Then, I press fit a bronze bearing in place for the gear to rotate upon.

This is the first build up of the tilter over system. I put power to the motor to make sure that the motor turned freely and that the gears didn't jam up any place along the path.

All sand blasted and painted. The motor is now attached, and I'll continue the job when the rest of the paint is dry on the other parts!

Here's a view of the assembled mount in the upright position. You can see the 3/8 antenna mounting stud on the left. The 2m/70cm antenna will mount to the right.

And here's the mount in the retracted position.

A trip to the junk box found a nice aluminium lever (I have absolutly no idea what it came off of, but this is why I never throw anything away that might be useful one day!)  you can see it mounted at the 11 o'clock position. This lever will activate the limit switches once they are installed.

I had an awful time mounting the limit switches. I tried 3 different types of glue, epoxy etc. I finally found that hot melt glue did the trick.

So here's the mount, secured to the  luggage rack of our Kia mini van.

Here's the controller, mounted to the front seat. The current radio will be changed out now to my Yaesu 857d.

Closeup of the mount. Hamstick fore, 2 meter/70 cm aft

I welded up a bracket to attach the radio to the back of the front seat mount.

Here's the control head, hot melt glued to the dash under the factory radio. This makes for a nice, neat installation.

And here's the radio, all hooked up and ready  for action! It'll be nice to have HF in the van! We've got ham sticks for 40-10 meters. One day when money isn't so tight, I'd like to get an ATAS-120 or other screwdriver antenna!

Finally, here's an animated gif of the antenna in action! I still need to run a ground strap from the mount, to the luggage rack and then down to the van body. It's important that you have a good RF ground for hamstick type antennas or you're loosing half of the antenna!

Total cost of this antenna mount was $45, with the only items needing to be purchased being the motor, and a couple bits at Radio Shack.

Debbie wanted a raised garden bed for her herbs and root veggies, so I built up a 3 foot high garden bed!

Here's the bed, 3 foot by 8 foot. I've started  to fill it with mulch left over from her chickens to bring the level up before I add soil.

Some lovely herbs planted. Can't wait to eat 'em!

As much as I liked the wire racking I used for my ham gear, I was having trouble getting to the rear of the rack when I wanted to  change something out.

So, I built  a new shelf unit! The new shelves are spaced for my gear, allowing me to add 4 additional shelves. I was also able to get the radios down close to eye level. here's the finished shelf unit

In this picture, you can see the "neat" system I devised to allow me to rotate the entire unit 180 degrees, allowing access to the rear.

The bottom flange is screwed  down to the shack floor. the flange at the top of the  picture is in the bottom of the shelf unit, and allows the 4 inch  pipe to turn  freely.

In this picture, you can see the system assembled. now the entire unit will rotate around this  axis, on the casters you can see  on the bottom of the shelf. Clearance is tight in my tiny ham shack, but I can now rotate the entire unit with 1/2 inch to spare!.

Here's the new shelf unit, everything installed and working. I completely redid the grounding sytem, as I had a ground loop somewhere on the old shelves and needed to fix that! (It was caused by the metal shelves themselves)

Now I can see my amp, which had been at my feet. I've got 4 additional shelves now, for new equipment as I get it.

My neighbor behind me had a 25 foot piece of pipe he was going to throw away. Well, my brain started turning at what I might do with it. The result was this flag pole! I'd wanted one for the front yard. First I designed and cut out an eagle. Then after welding it together, I welded it to the end of the pipe, along with a pulley. Here are a couple of pictures of the completed project.

Hard to see, but here's the completed flagpole ready for Old Glory!

Debbie came up with a flag, so it's all done!

My wife raises chickens. She wanted an automatic chicken feeder. The trash can hopper holds 50 pounds of feed, and only needs to be refilled every two weeks.

Here's a view of the auger that pulls the feed into the trough.

The feeder is controlled by this timer board. The timer sits in the ham shack.

Completed feeder, ready for chickens!

A friend of mine wanted to mount a mag mount antenna outside is rented house. I came up with this rain gutter mount.

Feel free to copy the design for your own use. The mount clips on to the top edge of the rain gutter. It's installed and working great!