Sorry, I should have included that I have a reasonably well stocked junk box and an adequate selection of hand tools in my list. I do need a new breadboard though.... but these sorts of things are inexpensive, and can be picked up at the local electronics shop when the need arises, and I drive by on my way home from work.... much to my wallets dismay.
Regards
Christian
PS.
Perhaps I should add that I used to operate a amateur radio Satellite Gateway station in the past, fully automated with no operator input required. This was before and during the appearance of the Internet in our fair town. Originally, the only access I had to the internet was through a radio based gateway we placed at the local University. It operated at a blistering 1200 baud... later upgraded to 9600 baud. Everything was text based at a command prompt. Telnet, finger, ftp, smtp and so forth. I would, by using an old unix dumb terminal, terminal node controller and a vhf fm radio, access the internet to get satellite "keps" from Amsat that I could use with my Comodore 64 to track satellites in real time. I also recall being shown a marvelous piece of software called "Mosaic" which was something called a browser meant to display stuff graphically and used something they called the World Wide Web. Who would have thought that would catch on, eh?
Back to my gateway, as mentioned, it was fully automated with antennas that tracked low earth orbit satellites and I had to build my own tracking box (self contained computer as using a real computer, just for that, was too expensive at the time), analog to digital interfaces with opto electric isolators and the list goes on... Today it sounds so old fashioned, but back then it seemed like bleeding edge stuff to me. My station was responsible for handling all message traffic destined for Canadian hams using packet radio and I would upload outgoing messages to the satellite for the rest of the world. It was fun, mentally challenging and ultimately became irrelevant with the advent of email and the www becoming available to everyone. It was a lot of work and challenging at the time. I spent many an evening reading and learning electronics in order to build, modify or fix something in my station, but when the internet became common, it seemed pointless and expensive, so I dropped the whole thing and went on to other hobbies. Today, as I approach retirement, I've once again found an interest in electronics (very much thanks to Dave and his EEVblog) and I'm wondering where it will all go, but I suspect it will be ham radio related in my case.
So there you have my ham/electronics background. I was actually trained as a agricultural mechanic/machinist, later working as a gunsmith, driving instructor, motorcycle, marine and finally auto mechanic before I left the trade to do something completely different, where I will remain until I reach retirement, and then I'll probably attempt to find something else to learn that I can do for fun/money.
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