Spring Break!

Hooray for Spring Break!
Even if it's only a week :(

None the less, I have plenty to do. (In addition to homework...)

(One of) My big projects for this week:

It's starting to make sense :)
This is a great mixer.
If everything goes well, it gets installed this week. Then I have to document and explain the new system. Should be fun, I've been working towards this for a while now, and I think it will significantly improve the church's audio system.

I also have a update on the speaker. I finished typing everything out, and then something weird happened and it all got deleted... So that should be coming soon, when I feel like typing it again.

It's hard to realize just how connected I am at college. It's just been a few days, and I'm already starting to miss some of my friends. On the other hand, I have enough to catch up on it's not such a bad thing. (my to-do list is about a page long, written in paragraph form...)

In unrelated news, I really like working with HDPE plastic. It machines very nicely, it's easy to work with, and finishes decently. I got about a 12" sheet a while back from onlinemetals.com, (good place for raw materials) and was able to use a scrap from that to hand make a replacement part for an old camera, but that's a different story.
Every time I work on something round like that I think I should make a lathe sometime. I've got a wonderful 3hp motor sitting around, and I could build a controller easily, but the chucks are quite expensive last I looked. GMU is planning a hackerspace, and I'm really looking forward to that. No timeline yet though. I put in a good number of suggestions for it :)
I like working with my hands. With (a lot of) luck, my speaker will be finished this week, and I can build the cabinet for a custom guitar amp I've been asked to make. If you're curious, I'm going to try the XF 212. It should be a fairly easy build, (all straight cuts) after what I've been doing. The custom electronics are a different matter. I have an idea of what I want to do, but I'm still working on it. All I really know at this point is that it will be a tube amp, and I want to try this: http://tubelab.com/articles/circuits/power-drive/ I built the SSE (Simple Single Ended) amplifier for a science fair project a few years back, and I still have it. I might use it on this project with an input transformer to drive the powerdrive board. I'll need to figure out power though. good HV transformers are expensive. I'll have to see if I can find a suitable one in my collection.

Anyway, more soon.