On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:48:27 -0500, "Backlash" wrote:
Anyone else brave enough to share THEIR first project?

As a kid, my fascination was with radio. I built a couple of crystal
radios, a working telegraph (metalworking content, I made the keys
and the sounders), etc. I was about 7 then. Later I made a radio
telescope (stacked homemade yagis on a homemade az-al mount).
It used a 416B as the preamp and it would actually show sun noise
on the oscillograph (paper tape). Won a science fair with that when
I was 12.

Then I got interested in high voltages. I built a Winhurst machine,
a Van de Graf generator, and a Cockcroft-Walton voltage multiplier.
Also built assorted Tesla coils and Jacob's Ladders. My workshop,
a converted brooder house, looked like something out of a 1930s
science fiction movie.

Any metal parts I needed for any of those projects would send
me off to my father's machine shop. Either I made the parts myself,
or my father or my uncle helped when I didn't know how to do
something.

Gary