SolderSmoke is the story of a secret, after-hours life in electronics. Bill Meara started out as a normal kid, from a normal American town. But around the age of 12 he got interested in electronics, and he has never been the same.
To make matters worse, when he got older he became a diplomat. His work has taken him to Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, the Spanish Basque Country, the Dominican Republic, the Azores islands of Portugal, London, and, most recently, Rome. In almost all of these places his addiction to electronics caused him to seek out like-minded radio fiends, to stay up late into the night working on strange projects, and to build embarrassingly large antennas above innocent foreign neighborhoods. SolderSmoke takes you into the basement workshops and electronics parts stores of these exotic foreign places, and lets you experience the life of an expatriate geek. If you are looking for restaurant or hotel recommendations, look elsewhere. But if you need to know where to get an RF choke re-wound in Santo Domingo, SolderSmoke is the book for you.
SolderSmoke is no ordinary memoir. It is a technical memoir. Each chapter contains descriptions of Bill’s struggles to understand (really understand) radio-electronic theory. Why does P=IE? Do holes really flow through transistors? What is a radio wave? How does a frequency mixer produce sum and difference frequencies? If these are the kinds of questions that keep you up at night, this book is for you.
Finally, SolderSmoke is about brotherhood. International, cross-border brotherhood. Through the SolderSmoke podcast we have discovered that all around the world, in countries as different as Sudan and Switzerland, there are geeks just like us, guys with essentially the same story, guys who got interested in radio and electronics as teenagers, and who have stuck with it ever since. Our technical addiction gives us something in common, something that transcends national differences. And our electronics gives us the means to communicate. United by a common interest in radio, and drawn closer together by means of the internet, we form an “International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards.”
Alaska’s super-power High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) transmitters in Gakona, Alaska, will take advantage of the WSPR digital pr... Read more
Yaesu FTDX101D As you are aware there is the soon to be released Yaesu FTdx101D 100W SDR transceiver. I am also pleased to announce the big brother of... Read more
“Solar activity picks up this week after a lull, bringing some fast solar wind that is causing a mild solar storm. Aurora has been seen at high... Read more
WRTC 2018 eV, organizer of the World Radio Sport Team Championship in 2018 would be to be able to announce that Spiderbeam is the antenna supplier for... Read more
“IZ6TSA, IZ6CRK, IK6JNH, IK6VXO and IK8UND will be active from Drvenik Veli (IOTA EU-016) as 9A8DV during IOTA Contest 2015. QSL via IK6VXO” Source:... Read more
The sun is blank–no sunspots. This means solar activity is very low. Credit: SDO/HMI NO FIREWORKS ON THE 4TH OF JULY: Sunspots vanished almost t... Read more
The 60 meter band or 5 MHz band is a relatively new amateur radio allocation (not strictly a band), first introduced in 2002, that was original... Read more
Ham License by Ray Novak With the number of amateur radio licenses reaching an all time high with nearly every passing year, it may be hard to see why... Read more
The ZN-HKR is new for 2015. It is an all brass straight key built on a 4″ diameter brass base. It features 4 ball bearing and silver con... Read more
Part 1 HF enthusiasts style collection longing for HF communication does not stop! DX QSO and domestic competition DXCC # 1 Honor by prominence fee... Read more
Recent Posts
HAARP Campaign to Use WSPR on 80 Meters
![Yaesu FTDX101D [ Preliminary Information ]](https://qrznow.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FTDX101MP-265x168.jpg)
Yaesu FTDX101D [ Preliminary Information ]
Fast Solar Solar Wind & First Sunspot of a New Cycle !
Spiderbeam antenna supplier for WRTC 2018
9A8DV Drvenik Veli IOTA EU-016
NO FIREWORKS ON THE 4TH OF JULY
Guide! New Band 60 meters ( 5MHZ )
Time to Upgrade Your Ham License by N9JA
The ZN-HKR is new for 2015 by N3ZN
CQ ham radio 2015 年 October – Japan
Warning: file_get_contents(https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/fastbutton?url=https%3A%2F%2Fqrznow.com%2Fsoldersmoke-global-adventures-in-wireless-electronics-free%2F): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found in /home/qrznow/public_html/wp-content/themes/goodnews5/framework/functions/posts_share.php on line 151
