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From workmate to Metalwork-mate

Written on July 25, 2023.

When a workmate goes heavy metal For a bit of outdoor practice welding, I made a wooden mount to securely hold a vise to an old workmate. First step: gather up some scrap lumber to make a nice base that the top surface of the workmate can really grip into. No movement up or down. It’s ugly but it’s solid. Yes, those old...

The Great Canadian Antenna

Written on January 19, 2023.

Can it get anymore Canadian than this? Long-time members and readers may remember the Great Canadian Alligator Clip and how we put it to good use keeping some librarians nicely grounded. What could we do for a patriotic encore? The answer came to us from ylab friend John/VE3IPS. We were storing some old radios in a shed, and sent him...

Winter Blacksmithing

Written on November 21, 2022.

Hammered. The metal. Not us. On Saturday November 19th, a few ylab members and friends met up at FireSword Forge in Guelph for an intro to blacksmithing with expert blacksmith David Brandow and our own Metal Master Miro. Braving the cold and snow was easy – we brought a lot of equipment, with four forges to warm the hands and the...

CNC: Great progress and more materials

Written on April 12, 2022.

What else did you think we would test with? The bad news: back to the drawing board Easel We made more progress this week with our Shapeoko2 CNC machine. But first the bad news: we can’t use the Carbide Command software to run it. Carbide is the manufacturer of the Shapeoko machines. Their software doesn’t support anything...

Getting ready for CNC at ylab

Written on April 8, 2022.

When a laser cutter won’t cut it Our latest equipment donation is a Shapeoko CNC machine. Thank you Jedi Jay! After an initial shake-town and successful testing by ylab member Craig and his accomplice Shari, they came in and gave us a quick overview of its operation. After some test use, we came up with some improvements. The...

We are open again!

Written on October 4, 2021.

Finally! 18 long months. That’s how long we’ve been out of our home at the DDO – Richmond Hill’s David Dunlap Observatory. Mostly, it’s been COVID. But the DDO has not been idle during that time, undergoing a major restoration. We’ll post more about that later. The DDO is officially a community center...

DDO Black Hole Bigger Than Expected

Written on February 27, 2021.

Not a DDO construction update. Cygnus X-1, the first X-ray source accepted to be a black hole, is bigger than expected. Possibly the biggest astronomical claim to fame for the giant telescope of the David Dunlap Observatory is its role in the first observations confirming Cygnus X-1 as a black hole. We haven’t checked lately to see...

Antenna science goes to pot

Written on February 6, 2021.

Half-baked or well done? If you know anything about radio and antennas – and if you don’t, check out our beginner radio and antenna pages – you know that the most basic antenna is a dipole, and a dipole antenna has two sides. All antennas require two sides. A magnetic mount antenna (magmount) looks like it has only one...

Baofeng DM-X/DM-1702: Is this the saddest radio ever?

Written on January 13, 2021.

If only as a warning to others. Way back in 1976, General Motors introduced the Chevette, a sad little cramped hatchback that, when equipped with the automatic transmission, could barely drag itself above 100 km/hour. Friends had rusted-out Pintos and Toyotas that we would rather ride in than a new Chevette. GM was the biggest automaker...

A cheaper antenna: the Red Green J-Pole

Written on January 8, 2021.

What else would you expect? People make J-Pole antennas out of all kind of things… copper pipe… twin-lead/ladder line. But who has that kind of stuff lying around the house? And the tools to work it? Everybody has speaker wire! Old speaker wire. Now that’s something a lot of people have lying around. If you took a ham...

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Located inside the Richmond Hill David Dunlap Observatory
123 Hillsview Dr, Richmond Hill, ON L4C 1T3