will run on Dilithium crystals and self levitate ...so it will be extremely light. Live long and prosper!!!!! LOL LOL Who knows what Dave J has up his sleeve, hope he's a star trek fan! Is it actually confirmed that there will be a new CZ or is all this just an excercise in rumour?
Find's Treasure Forums
Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!
You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.
Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.
Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.
Click here to register!
Need Support Help?
Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you
Changed email? Forgot to update your account with new email address? Need assistance with something else?, click here to go to Find's Support Form and fill out the form.
Some scant details on the new CZ coming soon....
- Thread starter Ivan
- Start date
Sorry to disappoint, Ivan, but I'm not a Trekkie, I'm a Luddite. It plays out in funny ways.
My most recent major platform release was the GB/G2 platform. That platform did a lot of stuff very well, but what it did best is to make a machine that's actually rather complex look very simple to the user. We even eliminated USA coin icons.
My oscilloscope is a $400 analog dual channel hardly changed from the standard 1970's 'scope. Most of the other guys have digital scopes and I give them a really hard time about how their troubleshooting problems turn out to be the oscilloscope itself.
I don't like gadgets. No TV, no stereo, as I said no digital 'scope, and it was only about 6 hours ago that for the first time in my life I bought a cellphone. Its first immediate impact was to crash the email service I already had, I recovered it but still haven't proven the fone can do anything besides crash my email service.
Yesterday I gave a class to our engineers on transistors, a subject which strangely enough most EE's grads are given a sheepskin without knowing a damn thing about. (Was darn hear a high school dropout myself, academia is foreign to me.) A few university students decide to specialize in the basic physics and learn a little bit about what a transistor is. ......About half an hour of yesterday's class was devoted to explaining the universal properties of a silicon bipolar junction-- voltage, current, impedance, temperature coefficient, the basis of all precision high-performance bipolar analog design-- with a simple graph on the whiteboard which involved only straight lines, and only two numbers to remember, 1.2 Volts and 600 Kelvins. I showed the class how to memorize this graph without even having to draw it in their notebooks (it's that simple), and that graph when drawn explains huge bunches of stuff that the data sheets never tell you, and it applies to every bipolar transistor ever manufactured. The mysterious stuff. I reminded the class that this was straight-line algebra, Junior High School stuff, you don't need to know that Boltzmann's Constant ever existed, and I bet none of the students had ever seen any of this in their EE education, did anyone care to either confirm or refute? ......Nobody had ever seen it, but one of our recent hires turns out to have had quite a bit of semiconductor physics background in the University. He both confirmed the accuracy of what I had presented and agreed that he'd never seen the bipolar junction reduced to a simple 7th grade graphical problem, in the University it was always presented as a set of disconnected problems each of which had complicated equations and none of which had an obvious connection to real product engineering.
Modern EE grads either memorize complicated equations or fail to do so. They know how to simulate in Spice but haven't the slightest inkling whether their input data or the output results have any meaning in the real world. When it comes to design tools, their first question is whether or not their present computer can handle the CAD software they need to do their job. That's when I whip out my instant-boot laptop which comprises an ARRL reactance graph dating back to (I think) the 1950's, and a $3 slide rule dating from the 1960's to handle the problems the sheet of paper doesn't. OK, I also admit to using a TI-30X pocket calculator (dating from the 1980's) for higher math, say the sort that used to be taught in 8th grade.
It's not a secret (although not widely bandied about) that Fisher research on dirt is leading-edge stuff that goes back to my earliest days at Fisher 30 years ago. It got a head start based on my even earlier research in soil science, hydrology, and climatology. ......A funny Luddite sort of thing, is that most of our labwork is done with stuff we buy at the local "Bed & Bath" chain store, which also has a pretty decent kitchen department. A few of y'all may have followed GunnarMN's Culpepper thread in the Metal Detecting forum where I posted "no comment"...... Well, there is some comment after all, this is it.............
We've already hired the guy who's the staff scientist designated to replace me in that role when I eventually kick the bucket, I ain't no youngster. He's got the academic background that I don't have, but when it comes time to do soil science research, we have a name for it: "making mud pies". We happen to be very good at the mud pie business.
Its been awhile since we introduced a major new product platform, but we're not asleep at the wheel, we've taken on some big challenges that are taking some time to turn into products.
There will be lots of rumors, there already have been. Some will turn out to have some truth behind them even if they were someone's wild-hair guesses. Some will turn out to be wrong even if they were based on inside information from the factory what we have under development (since what we have under development in engineering can change depending on what marketing department is finding potential buyers for). The rumors even if true aren't of much use to a customer: until you can put your money on the barrelhead and take delivery on the product, none of it really matters much. This post you can take as some combination of entertainment and corporate image work.
The path we're on has its difficulties, but I enjoy the challenge of doing what others don't realize can or should be done and I'm very optimistic about the future of FTP-Fisher.
--Dave J.
My most recent major platform release was the GB/G2 platform. That platform did a lot of stuff very well, but what it did best is to make a machine that's actually rather complex look very simple to the user. We even eliminated USA coin icons.
My oscilloscope is a $400 analog dual channel hardly changed from the standard 1970's 'scope. Most of the other guys have digital scopes and I give them a really hard time about how their troubleshooting problems turn out to be the oscilloscope itself.
I don't like gadgets. No TV, no stereo, as I said no digital 'scope, and it was only about 6 hours ago that for the first time in my life I bought a cellphone. Its first immediate impact was to crash the email service I already had, I recovered it but still haven't proven the fone can do anything besides crash my email service.
Yesterday I gave a class to our engineers on transistors, a subject which strangely enough most EE's grads are given a sheepskin without knowing a damn thing about. (Was darn hear a high school dropout myself, academia is foreign to me.) A few university students decide to specialize in the basic physics and learn a little bit about what a transistor is. ......About half an hour of yesterday's class was devoted to explaining the universal properties of a silicon bipolar junction-- voltage, current, impedance, temperature coefficient, the basis of all precision high-performance bipolar analog design-- with a simple graph on the whiteboard which involved only straight lines, and only two numbers to remember, 1.2 Volts and 600 Kelvins. I showed the class how to memorize this graph without even having to draw it in their notebooks (it's that simple), and that graph when drawn explains huge bunches of stuff that the data sheets never tell you, and it applies to every bipolar transistor ever manufactured. The mysterious stuff. I reminded the class that this was straight-line algebra, Junior High School stuff, you don't need to know that Boltzmann's Constant ever existed, and I bet none of the students had ever seen any of this in their EE education, did anyone care to either confirm or refute? ......Nobody had ever seen it, but one of our recent hires turns out to have had quite a bit of semiconductor physics background in the University. He both confirmed the accuracy of what I had presented and agreed that he'd never seen the bipolar junction reduced to a simple 7th grade graphical problem, in the University it was always presented as a set of disconnected problems each of which had complicated equations and none of which had an obvious connection to real product engineering.
Modern EE grads either memorize complicated equations or fail to do so. They know how to simulate in Spice but haven't the slightest inkling whether their input data or the output results have any meaning in the real world. When it comes to design tools, their first question is whether or not their present computer can handle the CAD software they need to do their job. That's when I whip out my instant-boot laptop which comprises an ARRL reactance graph dating back to (I think) the 1950's, and a $3 slide rule dating from the 1960's to handle the problems the sheet of paper doesn't. OK, I also admit to using a TI-30X pocket calculator (dating from the 1980's) for higher math, say the sort that used to be taught in 8th grade.
It's not a secret (although not widely bandied about) that Fisher research on dirt is leading-edge stuff that goes back to my earliest days at Fisher 30 years ago. It got a head start based on my even earlier research in soil science, hydrology, and climatology. ......A funny Luddite sort of thing, is that most of our labwork is done with stuff we buy at the local "Bed & Bath" chain store, which also has a pretty decent kitchen department. A few of y'all may have followed GunnarMN's Culpepper thread in the Metal Detecting forum where I posted "no comment"...... Well, there is some comment after all, this is it.............
We've already hired the guy who's the staff scientist designated to replace me in that role when I eventually kick the bucket, I ain't no youngster. He's got the academic background that I don't have, but when it comes time to do soil science research, we have a name for it: "making mud pies". We happen to be very good at the mud pie business.
Its been awhile since we introduced a major new product platform, but we're not asleep at the wheel, we've taken on some big challenges that are taking some time to turn into products.
There will be lots of rumors, there already have been. Some will turn out to have some truth behind them even if they were someone's wild-hair guesses. Some will turn out to be wrong even if they were based on inside information from the factory what we have under development (since what we have under development in engineering can change depending on what marketing department is finding potential buyers for). The rumors even if true aren't of much use to a customer: until you can put your money on the barrelhead and take delivery on the product, none of it really matters much. This post you can take as some combination of entertainment and corporate image work.
The path we're on has its difficulties, but I enjoy the challenge of doing what others don't realize can or should be done and I'm very optimistic about the future of FTP-Fisher.
--Dave J.
Wow................Thank You Dave. I am surprised that you would actually reply to my post. What a great forum...........I have my cash waiting ...............turn out the new CZ and I turn over the cash. I have total confidece that what you guys at Fisher produce will be awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!
scubadetector
New member
n/t
Thanks for making that clear as mud. I know about bipolar as my wife is a therapist and I had a transistor radio as a kid, so we are good there. I also used to watch Password so I remember Alan Luddite, but I missed the connection. Just know I agree completely and want a place in line to get the new stick. And tell marketing that money is no object as long as its lighter, faster, stronger, deeper with perfect IDing and of course waterproof with much improved battery life. Oh yeah, no weird colors- PLEASE!
Thanks Santa, uh Dave.
Your friend, Tom
Thanks Santa, uh Dave.
Your friend, Tom
"Luddite" is the name of an anti-industrialization movement I think it was the late 1800's in England and Scotland (a quick Google would dredge up some more accurate factoids). Their fondness for sabotaging factory machinery gave rise to the phrase "throwing a monkey wrench in the works".
--Dave J.
--Dave J.
pulltabMiner
New member
If you build it...we will buy! 
Dave J.,
Bringing back memories!! Slide rules, bi-polar transistors, Stefan-Boltman law, Maxwell's equations, etc. ... And test instruments that alter the response of the circuit that is being observed.
Hope your mud pies continue to give you the range of conditions needed for development testing of the new platforms.
Now I need to go read the GunnarMN's Culpepper thread.
Cheers,
tvr
Bringing back memories!! Slide rules, bi-polar transistors, Stefan-Boltman law, Maxwell's equations, etc. ... And test instruments that alter the response of the circuit that is being observed.
Hope your mud pies continue to give you the range of conditions needed for development testing of the new platforms.
Now I need to go read the GunnarMN's Culpepper thread.
Cheers,
tvr
Always educational and entertaining to read posts from the world's premiere 
engineering savant and luddite.
Perhaps we are on the verge of the soil no longer being the ultimate master in regards to detector settings and depth potential?
I have complete faith in Dave Johnson's ability to create a brilliant new FT platform.
I have considerably less faith in a new platform being "bug" free...
So count me in for that new platform...second on the block.
engineering savant and luddite.Perhaps we are on the verge of the soil no longer being the ultimate master in regards to detector settings and depth potential?
I have complete faith in Dave Johnson's ability to create a brilliant new FT platform.
I have considerably less faith in a new platform being "bug" free...
So count me in for that new platform...second on the block.
TheOtherLeggoHead
Member
I am amazed as my life goes on, how much I appreciate Gordon West, and the ARRL.
Nice post.
Nice post.
Coilfisher
New member
LOL! Me neither Bryce.
I am not taking out a second mortgage so I can dig up old silver dimes.
I am not taking out a second mortgage so I can dig up old silver dimes.
Would'nt it be nice to order the options you wanted? Waterproof, wireless, gold and silver only. What about a machine for bullets, buckles and buttons. Another thing Dave ole buddy old pal let me test the gold and silver model for about five years before releasing it to the rest of my old buddies and pals. Now is that too much to ask for? Not being selfish you undestand just thorough. HH 
