Science/Engineering/Technical forums

I'm newbie Mike Veldman, I live in Stillwater Oklahoma and work in research here at the university. I just stumbled in here and thought I'd say hello. I'm one of those older geeks, that has never lost my enthusiasm for hanging out over the edge to see what is down there. I've been designing, building and engineering stuff for a living for a good forty years. For myself personally, a bit longer. On a daily basis I work in multiple disciplines, I guess that's the "real world", at home many more. I have a number of proven skills, but I'm not much of a talker, I will however try to contribute if I think I have something of value to offer. I listed many of my ongoing obsessions in my profile. In addition to my continuing obsession with tiny signals from space and building my retirement home, I'm making progress on my fusor and cyclotron. Yes, I'm one of those, I'll post some pictures at some point. Anyway, glad to be here. I like to hang with thinking types.

mike

I just wanted to add, if any of you are social media types, I have a bunch of project and lab pictures on facebook.

Welcome, you sound like our kinda guy indeed -- my wife would say the same stuff I think as well. I got my real engineering feet under me working super weak signals myself, for one of those beltway bandits in DC (intelligence community). I'm sure we'll find plenty of stuff to talk about. A real big part of all this is electronics in general and getting reliable signal measurements specifically, else you can't know if that last change you made was a good idea or not!

For more on just me and my projects, the main site is where to look. We have 4 buildings full of books and benches here, and are off the grid (solar PV) ourselves. I'm recently semi-retired, but that just means not so much that every day is Saturday -- it might mean every day is Monday just as much, and I'm still building my "retirement home". Kind of a race against time, isn't it? I mean, I've lived more or less off the grid and on the land for a few decades, but every year getting that firewood and maintaining all the infrastructure gets harder, so the race is to get it to be easy faster than I get weaker

Thanks for the hearty welcome. 'beltway bandits" that's good! I spent from 78 to 98 on a consulting retainer to the Department of Defense, NASA and later DARPA. So in addition to my consulting/contracting forays in and out of the automotive industry, a good portion of my life is covered in non-disclosure agreements. But, no matter what, I love to build things!

Thanks,

mike

Hi Mike, welcome indeed. Does your list of interest therefore mean that you have any interest in ELF/SLF/ULF signals? I used to be a bit partial to such investigations some years ago, just simple stuff like plugging in a big coil into a sound card as a Fourier analyser, and plotting S/ULF emissions from lightning sources.

[The device I am working on I rather fancied, once upon a time, might even be able to perform as a ULF 'suitcase' transmitter. Not sure it would do so, but I have improved designs since I would like to try out sometime, see if I can get a resonant mode travelling around the whole earth strongly enough to detect it on the way back! I think there are some good reasons not to try that out (!! - I don't wanna be thought of as trying to compete with Clam Lake! ), but, hey, just dreams of future projects......]