Noob review of BLM-50 473nm 50mW from Extreme Lasers on eBay

Also, That red you have looks strange..

It looks to me they masked the diode just behind the lens to cleanup the beam

what you are seeing is reflections inside being emitted ..could be wrong tho..
my eyes play tricks on me sometimes :)

Cool! Another sale or two and I may come out and bother you early next week! I'll bring the red and you can disect it... :shock:

My grandfather was into HAM... I just like pork. :D

Another HAM! Cool... I was into it as a teenager (KA9KPG), but I lost interest. My Dad and my Grandfather were both HAMs. (K9ERO and W8LYS, respectively) But they're both gone now :( and the Drake TR7 my Dad had, along with my Grandfather's Kenwood TS820 were donated to a local Florida ham club.

There is still a nice 5 element tri-band beam at my Mom's house. Pretty sure it's got a tailtwister rotor on it too... Anyone feel like climbing a tower to get it down? (Free to a good home!)

Adam

Wow Kewl Adam..

I come from a family of Hams as well...
Great grandfather was an Inventor of sorts back during th spark-gap days.
Grandpa was an into RADAR during WWII and my Dad just did a bunch of off-the wall
projects, but was mostly into computer controlled related items, starting from the first Modems to
that camera at the Cape for tracking..also some microwave.
Me..well without tooting my horn too much..I basically followed in his footsteps..
wish my son would tho.. ah well.
But I ended up from doing microwave rf as a kid mostly to hear the Apollo and the shuttle to satellite TV
and to more practical applications.

Talk about young,,look at this http://photonlexicon.com/albums/albu...019a.sized.jpg

And because of all the stuff I was into as a kid (got my novice at 8 ) and doing lots of various stuff
it got me to where I'm at today..building and maintaining Analog and Digital TV transmitters during the day.
And building lasers at nite.

Ham radio is the fault of all my experimenting..hehe
ask Maxy..she really believes I'm the "real" mad-scientist... :roll:
But I believe we all here on PL are anyway...quite the niche group we are. ;)

Sadly, my haming is on hold and my two towers are a mess..needing new rotors since those no-name storms came thru 10yrs ago...but I still have beacons running at another location.
Some of my tower crew friends keep ribbing me and claim some week-end they are going to do a marathon make-over at Marconi's station..hehe.
I do have some mobil equipment but my cars are not radio ready or have room.
oh well, someday..prolly when the sunspot cycle comes back up !!!

Wow... Love the photo! You're only a little older than I am, judging by the pic. Pretty cool though - listening in to the Nasa missions like that. When I was in middle school we used to use the club station we had to chase the Russian woodpecker all over the band. (Illegal as hell, but lots of fun!) We were pushing nearly 2.5KW out the end of the Alpha linear, and we had a 6 element 10 meter beam on the roof of the school. (We also had a 5 element 15 meter, and even a 2 element 40 meter beam!) Bottom line - when we wanted to get out, we got out - no matter what the ionosphere was doing! (Well, not quite, but we sure did a lot better than the other guys in the club that had dipoles!) It helped that we were on top of a hill, and the school's roof was about 120 feet high to start with. Great fun though - to chase that damn radar...

I guess HAM radio was part of the reason I got interested in computers and electronics, though truthfully I was already something of a geek before I became a HAM. My grandfather in particular was quite instrumental... He used to install the radar on the Cobia-class subs they used to build at the Manitowoc shipyards during WWII. (Sounds a lot like what your Grandfather was doing on ships...) Anyway, he was an invenerate tinkerer - always building Heathkit projects and stuff. He used to make it a point to always explain stuff to me, and he really got me thinking about science in general, and electronics in particular.

Saddly, my interest in electronics and computers hasn't carried over into my day job. But that's OK... I still enjoy it as a hobby.

Adam

WOW, nice Dark Side gif!!! 8)

Thanks AMcD.. I like it too :)

Yeah I remember the wood-pecker seems we all did the same thing to get rid of it..
10mtrs was and still is fun but not as much as it was during the CB boom...
I remember the wood-pecker made it as low a 40mtrs at nite.. on 20 it seemed to be there day and nite
10mtrs was my favourite band in the early morning..as we could work into Europe then.
I had a 4 ele tri-band quad and a homebrew 4cx1000 later replaced by an 8877.
Didnt need the amp much as it would tear-up the TV's around the block.

Now 6 and 2mtr ssb is fun too , I did a lot on them.
worked all over the world on 50mhz with no more than 100w with a 9ele I have now laying on the roof.
I need to get it back up on the tower someday..
2mtr ssb and cw did a lot there too, even moon-bounce for a few years , I had 4 x 19 elements
and a another 8877 amp here. only have one of those beams left after the storm.
the amp hasnt seen any power for about 10yrs...sad I know.

Even hf has taken a back-seat as well.. tho I still have a Kenwood TS-430s and a Dentron MLA-2500b to feed a 4band
4ele beam...also now laying on my roof..
Oh Well....someday

I was playin around with the motoized mirror... I also split the green... pointed the small split, red and blue towards the motorized mirror and got a nice white in the cornor of my ceilling.

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/9...1029pl2.th.jpg

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1...1028vp0.th.jpg

It's probably a 40mW R, 20mW G, 50mW B mix...

I got a friend who let me borrow his cheap wal mart fog machine, but he forgot the juice... Called him a minute ago and told him to carry his ass... Maybe I need the fog ready before the DAC will carry it's ass... Until then this is the only scanning I can do... And I need the fogger to enjoy it better. I was waiting for the DAC to get him to bring the juice... maybe the opposite'll work... the universe can move in mysteryous ways... To bad the post office doesn't deliver on Sundays... :(

Smoke fog machine trully a good thing , can see the beam clearly , looks so nice ! the beam will be more twinkling and dazzling , all the house will be light ! so cool .I like that ! but there is a smoky smell when we use it . as well as the smoke is not good for our health.

:o
Dragged this one up huh? The smoke from this fogger is a water based mix that actually smells like butterschotch... :? It's almost too much for my room.

I got the DAC about a week later and all is well now. I have a 200+mW maxyzmodule, a 30mW green (POS), and this 50mW blue all playing nice with aijii and daves scanpro30s... :D