Himself an electrician

The importance of proper operation of a car’s electrical equipment is, of course, indisputable. This thematic selection prepared by our author tells how to increase its reliability. HOW TO MEASURE THE DWELL ANGLE? The dwell angle (contact closed angle) of a VAZ-2105 car can be determined by the amount of movement of the camshaft timing Read more…

I’ve been familiar with the “Modelist-Konstruktor” magazine for more than a year now. Mainly as an avid reader and somewhat less as a DIY enthusiast, trying to implement in practice some of the promoted ideas and original technical solutions in the conditions of a simple home workshop. Now I’m offering one of my own developments. Read more…

A mini-electro-calorifier (MEC) type heater is unlikely to surprise anyone these days. These compact and quite convenient household appliances can be purchased to suit any taste. However, it’s not at all necessary to spend money on industrial products, let alone imported ones. I, for example, have long been using a homemade MEC that, by unanimous Read more…

While equipping my bathroom as a sauna (see “Modelist-Konstruktor” No. 10, 1997), I decided to make a powerful (3 — 3.5 kW) and reliable heater myself. The most acceptable option seemed to me to be an electric heater in a tin bucket with an asbestos-cement terminal block and brass studs, covered with a hinged metal Read more…

They say you can’t save much on matches, and yet… A simple and practical electronic “match,” the description of which we offer to readers’ attention, will free you from the need to constantly monitor that matchboxes don’t remain empty. The “match” works as follows. The electrical energy accumulated by capacitor C1 (see the schematic diagram) Read more…

It’s no secret that halogen lamps used in automobiles often fail. This happens as a result of a current surge that inevitably occurs every time they are switched on, when the filament coil is still in an unheated (cold) state. For example, a “halogen” fog lamp is designed to operate in normal mode with a Read more…

Among the various methods of connecting three-phase asynchronous electric motors to a single-phase network, the simplest and most well-known is probably the use of a capacitor called (due to the functions it performs in this case) a phase-shifting capacitor. In this case, one has to put up with the inevitable loss of power. For an Read more…

It’s getting dark. The sun is slowly setting towards the horizon. Dusk is coming. It’s still early to go to bed, I want to read and play chess. For motorists, energy for lighting is provided by a rechargeable battery. But hikers can also use electric lighting with no less success – a pocket wind power Read more…

Have you ever wondered what to do with an old screwdriver that is lying around idle because of a dead battery? I had a similar situation – a friend gave me his old Bosch with the comment: “The batteries don’t hold at all, it’s just torture.” So what do you think? I decided to breathe Read more…