John Moyle with a portable transceiver above Elizabeth Street, Sydney in Dec 1952. Showing the St James Theatre, David Jones Store, corner of Market Street & the T&G Building, corner of Park Street.
(Credit The State Library of NSW & Photo by Frederic Stanley Grimes).

The invite said: “At one point in time, what used to be an anchor eventually became portable, and then pocket size. Think calculator, phone, TV, timepiece, most test equipment. The definition of “portable” initially only meant it could be moved as some of these devices needed wheels, or 2 people to carry. Lets see the least portable of the portable version of a well known item that you can probably download as an application on your smartphone today!”

John Moyle could do portable in style!

Colin VK2JCC

Professor portable had to build his version of the portable loop. Took few goes and versions to get it going. When adjusting manually, the hand is impacting the resonance, so a stepper motor was added for remote tuning. Now controlled via his iPhone. Does it work? 1m from the ground and could contact RS42 from Qld and Vic … and by changing the direction to the right path got 55 from both sides using 10watts.

Glenn

5 watts public address (PA) amplifier, can run on 6volts and it has a handle … so ti’s portable! Runs with a vibrator but has never been tested on batteries, otherwise can run on main. And it only weights 8kg!

Mal VK2TMF

A collection of portable items that are now all replaced by a smart phones: compass, torch, SLR camera, TV remote, Hi-8 Camcorder, map, portable speaker, 1st generation Xbox Game Console, TNC, and … obviously a phone.

Carmel VK2CAR

Carmel wanted to bring a Reel-to-Reel tape recorder but was too heavy! So what about a small boom-box – 22watts, 10kg fully featured. One of the heads on the deck was open circuit and had to be replaced, along with the belt drive, replaced with one from WES. The boom box was purchased for $10 at the markets and is now rare and collectible.

Sean VK2THT

Opted for test equipment to reduce the carry weight. So from analog to digital. Also 3 cameras from develop your own film, to first expensive digital camera still used today for micro-photography, and finally the famous GoPro.

Yves VK2AUJ – Portable Cassette Deck SONY TC-D5M

Frequency Characteristic: 20 Hz ~ 19 kHz (Metal Cassettes), the highest ever available for a cassette desk. $850 CAD in 1980. Can sometimes be seen on eBay for $1,500 AUD. It had a DC-DC converter so that speed could be maintained as batteries depleted.

And the winners

  • Best Story – Sean VK2THT
  • Most votes – Mal VK2TMF

The prices for the winner was a $20 Jaycar gift voucher each.

From Clifford who was Traveling

Have fun, folk. I would have brought my Tektronix 7904 oscilloscope (13.5kg without plugins) and my new FNIRSI hand-held scopemeter for comparison, but I’m in Melbourne.