October 2011 Archives
Latest addition to Tempe Town Lake is a pedestrian bridge connecting south and north shore of the man made lake. The costs of about $5 million we paid mainly with federal money. The four spans of 228 feet are suspened by 32 cables. Canvas shades stretched at arch intersections mirror the roof of the Tempe Center for the Arts.A little earlier from the bridge looking east.
Down the street a water mains burst spewing mud everywhere and also creating a sinkhole. At least it's not so hot anymore that the whole street would get caked with mud and cars cemented to the road.
Since I'm working on vacuum thermionic energy conversion in my research I thought it might be cool to actually use vacuum electronics for a device, i.e. build a vacuum tube amplifier. Pete Millet's site has great and detailed instructions for different audio amplifiers one can build.
The vacuum or electronic tubes I used (13EM7/15EA7) were made by General Electric probably 40 years ago and are still working. One tube houses dual triodes. Another key component of the amplifier is the transformers, they are new and made by Edcor Electronics, our state neighbors in New Mexico.
It's a fun project and working great, especially as headphone amp. Since I don't have an analog music source I use flac format of some vinyl rips which sounds pretty awesome. And the amp with operating tubes looks so rad(iant). haha.
Photography
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