A motley collection of ideas
A Honeywell XC100D carbon monoxide alarm that had reached the end of its service life recently came into my possession. At this stage, the unit may still appear to operate normally, but it can no longer be considered fully reliable. It signals this condition with a sharp chirp once every minute, accompanied by a flash … Read more
Kite flying is one of those rare pleasures that works equally well for children, grandparents and everyone in between. At its simplest it is a bright toy tugging at a line in the wind; at its best it becomes a quiet lesson in balance, air, tension and patience. And with competition kites — stunt kites, … Read more
In the old days, when someone bought a device, it came with an instruction manual. It was not necessarily good, but at least it existed. Today we are tossed between two extremes. One is that we receive nothing at all, only a QR code that takes us to the manufacturer’s website, and from there to … Read more
The device shown in the picture is the NZ-1 hand winding machine: a simple mechanical tool used to wind neat coils from wire, thin electrical conductor, or other filament-like material. It is not an automatic wonder machine, nor a CNC-controlled industrial device, but a cheap Chinese gadget. I bought it for about 30 euros. Its … Read more
On the edge of the Danube Bend, near Vác, there is a place where history doesn’t live behind museum glass—it sometimes lies right in front of your boots. The Vác–Cigány Valley archaeological site, based on field surveys, shows settlement traces from the Middle Neolithic and the Late Copper Age—and what is most striking for a … Read more
Among radio amateurs – especially abroad – fox hunting is still a fairly popular sport today. Here I present a simple fox‑hunting setup that can be used at home, in the garden, for play, for tracking animals, or even for hunting “flying foxes”. “Fox hunting”, or radio orienteering (Amateur Radio Direction Finding – ARDF, also … Read more
Every day, dozens of tiny, invisible instruments rise above our heads. Weather radiosondes that collect data from the lower and upper layers of the atmosphere, then a few hours later quietly disappear somewhere above fields, forests, and villages. The signals from these sondes can be received by anyone — and that’s where the exciting world … Read more