Electrical Engineering as a Hobby

From The Field: Electrical Engineering as a Hobby Not really, I am, and that's the fun part! Due to my addictions to learning and creating things, engineering and design were a natural fit. If you combine this with a love of aviation, you will get an aerospace engineer. Today, I work for GE Aviation designing jet engines, although as I love learning, I did not stop with aerospace engineering. In my free time, I have started to learn other branches of engineering. For many years I had an interest in electronics. In 2010, I was tired of people telling me that what I wanted to do in electronics was not difficult, they just did not have time to help me. I asked myself: "How hard can it be?" (Yes, I know that this is a dangerous mental state when combined with the desire to learn). So I started learning electrical engineering.

In the world, what inspired this desire to learn electrical engineering? I could ask. Well, in a few words: RC submarines. You're probably wondering if I'm trying to catch you or if they come with work torpedoes. Yes, RC submarines are a real thing; Yes, we have underwater races (it's not just a euphemism); And yes, some can fire torpedoes. As I got more involved with the hobby, the more I saw the wonderful mechanical trap that was used to control many of the systems on the boats. However, these systems were often unreliable due to their mechanical nature and their operation in warm and

humid environments. I could see that these systems could be simplified and improved easily with the addition of electronic components.

It was at this time that I came across SparkFun. It can be difficult when you are trying to learn electronics from scratch. At that time, there were not many resources that were readily available. Arduino was starting to have legs, and he still had not achieved the recognition he has today. SparkFun, with its forum, was a great source of learning. Things like, do I use a linear or switching regulator? Where can I get a box of varied components without having to pay a large sum of money and get 100 of everything?

These things may seem like simple questions for most, but for me at that time, they were not simple.

Since then, I have made substantial progress, including becoming the publisher of Electroschematics.com. I am currently designing a radio receiver (yes, this has been a very long project) for RC submarines. In the process I picked up a LimeSDR. These are fantastic devices at a really excellent price. They have many advantages, including the coverage of a large bandwidth of signal spectrum. The drawback is that it is really just a table without the beautiful finishes of a case. For my application, I plan to use this as a VNA of poor men. To do this, I need some u.fl for SMA cables, and some bare SMA connectors to make a set of standards (I plan to follow this link as a reference). The case will be printed in 3D and aligned with metal tape to give it the protective properties of the case.

Why go to this length to start a VNA? Well, to begin with, I had a few hundred dollars that I could save, but not a few thousand dollars to get a "real" NPV. Second, I am addicted to learning. Third, and this is the real technical reason, submerged antennas are not only too long once submerged, but also go through a change in impedance. There are very few articles that will help to calculate this. There is software that could be used, but, once again, this type of software tends to be tens of thousands of dollars for a license, and that is difficult to justify with a hobby budget. So, instead, we'll go back to the old method of using the basic principles to get closer to a design solution, then we'll use the tests to refine that solution. I'll let you know what happens to me once it's over.