"Paul Burridge" wrote in message
...
On 09 Sep 2004 11:42:56 GMT, (Troglodite) wrote:

About the closest group to beating us in
public visibility is probably those guys and gals with the battling
robots
with buzz saws on PBS robot wars, right? ;-) ;-)

But technically, those machines are NOT robots. If they were true robots,
they
would devise their own strategy. They are simply radio controlled
devices.

Yes, as yet. But given time, no doubt there'll be a category for
autonymous fighting robots. A few of us have attempted it, but only
scratched the surface of the possibilities.


I only have a link to this one.
http://www.cuuav.org/


There are already soccer playing robots in development (and playing games in
competition) at some universities. You obviously don't watch TV's NOVA.

--
Steve N, K,9;d, c. i My email has no u's.
..

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 14:00:59 -0500, "Steve Nosko"
wrote:


There are already soccer playing robots in development (and playing games in
competition) at some universities. You obviously don't watch TV's NOVA.

I try not to watch TV at all, if I can help it. Thanks for the update,
though.

--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.

"Airy R. Bean" wrote in message
...
Ham Radio is what Hams do, and not what the regulatory
powers seek to restrict.

Radio Hams are technical people. Those who buy radios
off-the-shelf, notwithstanding that they may have qualified
as Hams are behaving as CBers and are viewed as such.


And how technical does one need to be? Enough practical experience to screw
up a PL259 correctly? (Note I said correctly and by screw up do not mean
fettle.)
Enough to know the nature of EM radiation (no heat bands). Enough to
understand DSP?

Do tell Gareth. Do tell.

"Airy R. Bean" wrote in message
...
I think that you are confusing my wish to preserve Ham
Radio as a technical pursuit with your own mental processes
which you project so well below.

Perhaps it is that you are an unwitting CBer-Masquerading-
As-A-Radio-Ham who is annoyed at being "outed" and which
annoyance results in you revealing the innermost workings
of your psyche as below?

It is a very exciting and inspiring thing to continue to
educate yourself in all matters of technology - try it and
you'll find that there is more to Ham Radio than your
own CBisation of it!


Be you are a confessed CBer. Remember "some of my best friends" etc.

"Airy R. Bean" wrote in message
...
Not conclusive - golf is for the brain-dead, as are off-the-shelf
rigs.


Shall we list the off the shelf rigs you have owned? We could highlight the
ones you have been unable to maintain- too nervous was it?

The other thing that causes brain deaf is drink- Special Brew for example.

Paul Burridge wrote:
Hi guys,

Well do you think it is? I personally can't think of any other
passtime accessible to the individual which requires such a high
degree of technical knowledge to succeed at. If anyone can think of
something more complex, let's hear it!

Paul
Depends. Other hobbies that require some serious skills:

Amateur Telescope Making (lets see you design AND TEST multiple optical
surfaces with the reqired tolerance).

Home Foundary. Special skills required in safely handling white hot
molten metal, and making sand molds.

Amateur Rocketry. (Yup this IS rocket science! Im NOT talking
Estes here!)

Home building aircraft. Besides a pilots licence (to test the final
product) the skill to do it right (you going to actually FLY that thing
YOURSELF!).

Then there was the guy I met in college that built his own SUBMARINE!
(he was a scuba diver).

BTW, I AM interrested in numbers 1 and 2, and at one time number 4
(but I havn't flown since my 10 year old kids were born).

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 18:00:37 -0400, Ken Scharf wrote:

Depends. Other hobbies that require some serious skills:
[...]
Home Foundary. Special skills required in safely handling white hot
molten metal, and making sand molds.

With you on that one, I've made plenty of mistakes in amateur radio but
learnt a few things along the way.

Making mistakes in metal casting is not so forgiving...

--
Duncan Munro
http://amateur.duncanamps.com/
also http://metal.duncanamps.com/ !

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:37:17 +0100, Duncan Munro
wrote:

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 18:00:37 -0400, Ken Scharf wrote:

Depends. Other hobbies that require some serious skills:
[...]
Home Foundary. Special skills required in safely handling white hot
molten metal, and making sand molds.

With you on that one, I've made plenty of mistakes in amateur radio but
learnt a few things along the way.

Making mistakes in metal casting is not so forgiving...

It doesn't make it any more technical. Or dangerous, for that matter.

--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.

yes, Andrew, thanks for that note and some very good points...

we recently had our annual regional Hamcom 2004 convention, at which I had
the chance to catch local microwave and antennas guru Kent Britain's
WA5VJB's seminar on microwaves modifications. My favorite was a obsolete
cell phone 3 watt output chip that does 18 watts nicely on 13.8 Vdc ;-)
All the wi-fi and garage door conversions into microwave transceivers, and
the police radar detectors into microwave setups. And how about some of
the simple conversions of TV tuners into spectrum analyzer projects? ;-)
And the cable TV modules that do all sorts of jobs from preamps to power
amps ;-) So I just joined the North Tx Microwave Society to expand beyond
the satellite and ATV stuff we are doing now into new areas for our club
;-)

so thanks to computer and phone co. surplus, we may have a second
generation of surplus conversions to rival those of the 1950s and 1960s
for military surplus to amateur radio uses?

grins bobm

--
************************************************** *********************
* Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 *
********************Standard Disclaimers Apply*************************

"Airy R. Bean" wrote in message
...
Always remember to put your trouser leg _OUTSIDE_
your wellies and be _DAMN_ sure that your sand mould
is dry. A spider or two down the tubes causes an explosive
splash-back!




Is that how you fettle castings?



Does the Welly advice hold for your other pastimes?

On 11 Sep 2004 23:31:06 -0500, (Bob Monaghan)
wrote:

we recently had our annual regional Hamcom 2004 convention, at which I had
the chance to catch local microwave and antennas guru Kent Britain's
WA5VJB's seminar on microwaves modifications. My favorite was a obsolete
cell phone 3 watt output chip that does 18 watts nicely on 13.8 Vdc ;-)

You got a part number for that chip, Bob?
--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.

nope, sorry, but it was a more or less typical example of some of Kent
Britain's and others discoveries of easy ways to get onto microwave bands.
Raising the voltage on these chips does great things to the power output,
as that E^2/R goes up fast as E goes up a little ;-)

Another example was an amplifier with many microwave modules, most of the
power was used to produce a linear (digital compatible) output; junk that
overhead, and the power went up from 10 watts or so to over 100 watts ;-)

You might try emailing the North Texas Microwave Society or Kent directly?
http://www.ntms.org/ - we are having a major conference in October I
hope to attend, so I may have more notes there ;-) Kent is also the
author of the "cheap yagi" designs from VHF-CQ and other online sources.

sadly, there was a second seminar at Hamcom 2004 on resources for
microwave wanna-bees. The first were a series of older books on microwaves
and test equipment, with the sensible observation that most of the
affordable test gear being surplused now is described in use in these
older books ;-) The second was a series of newsletters and publications,
some in German/English, from RSGB, and ARRL on microwaves operations etc.

Some of these were described and seen to be quite pricey for the amount of
articles therein ;-( The NTMS has evidently made an effort to build up a
collection of articles and resources related to microwaves, rather than
have each member try to duplicate these costly and hard to find
references.

I am not seeing a lot in the way of homebrew microwave construction or
conversion articles, given some of the relatively easy projects I have
seen described at these seminars and in some ARRL materials I have etc.?
So the conference may turn up some more resources, I hope ;-)

Part of the motivation here is we are trying to "inherit" some big
roof-top microwave satellite dishes from our engineering school as these
get obsoleted as we go online with streaming video on demand. Our club's
roof access port is only ten feet from the bigger dish ;-) It will cost
the school major $ to take this stuff down, so it would save $ to let us
use it - and might provide lots of useful hands-on microwave experience
for some of our future graduates. That's my argument, anyway ;-)

If anybody knows of some microwave homebrew resource and project pages,
let me know!

regards bobm
--
************************************************** *********************
* Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 *
********************Standard Disclaimers Apply*************************

(Bob Monaghan) wrote in message ...
from http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=robot

A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of
performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being
programmed in advance.

A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control.
endquote:

Depends on your definition and viewpoint; sad to say, virtually all the
world's working robots in factories bear little resemblance to humans
(other than the demo walking robot from Japan, I guess? ;-0)

We had an IEEE sponsored contest to build software for battlefield robots
some years ago (late 1980s IIRC?). End up looking like a video game, which
is what the students wanted to build anyway. ;-)

I'm recording a 2 hour PBS program on videogame revolution tonight, so I
suspect it will be deja vu. However, Tom Clancy, the noted author of Red
October etc., made a point when on campus last year that the military is
using videogames corp. for training, and that the years of hand-eye
coordination training from gaming was a big plus in preparing young men
and women to utilize incredibly complex systems with videogame style
interfaces.

Personally, I wouldn't _want_ an autonomous battlefield robot without
using some human interaction in the loop. No sense making the term "killer
software bugs" come true ;-)

grins bobm

Well, it looks, at current Technological development, that I will
escape this planet without being stalked by killer Robots! However
the flies may be in danger!:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996366

http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/mission.htm


http://www.gastrobots.com

Paul Burridge wrote:
Hi guys,

Well do you think it is? I personally can't think of any other
passtime accessible to the individual which requires such a high
degree of technical knowledge to succeed at. If anyone can think of
something more complex, let's hear it!

Nope.

Try winemaking.

Dana K6JQ

"Dana Myers" wrote in message
. com...
Paul Burridge wrote:
Hi guys,

Well do you think it is? I personally can't think of any other
passtime accessible to the individual which requires such a high
degree of technical knowledge to succeed at. If anyone can think of
something more complex, let's hear it!

Nope.

Try winemaking.

Dana K6JQ

Amateur astronomers, hackers...

SioL