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PUBLISHER’S LETTER www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD Production Manager Greg Swain, B.Sc.(Hons.) Technical Staff John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.) Ross Tester Rick Walters Reader Services Ann Jenkinson Advertising Enquiries Rick Winkler Phone (02) 9979 5644 Fax (02) 9979 6503 Mobile: 0414 34 6669 Regular Contributors Brendan Akhurst Rodney Champness Garry Cratt, VK2YBX Julian Edgar, Dip.T.(Sec.), B.Ed Mike Sheriff, B.Sc, VK2YFK Philip Watson, MIREE, VK2ZPW Bob Young SILICON CHIP is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. A.C.N. 003 205 490. All material copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Printing: Macquarie Print, Dubbo, NSW. Distribution: Network Distribution Company. Subscription rates: $69.50 per year in Australia. For overseas rates, see the subscription page in this issue. Editorial & advertising offices: Unit 8, 101 Darley St, Mona Vale, NSW 2103. Postal address: PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW 2097. Phone (02) 9979 5644. Fax (02) 9979 6503. E-mail: silchip<at>siliconchip.com.au ISSN 1030-2662 * Recommended and maximum price only. 2  Silicon Chip Email us with your ideas for editorial content Each month as we produce SILICON CHIP we try to give a wide range of projects and articles to keep readers interested and satisfied. It is clear that a large number of you are stimulated and entertained by what you read. But there is always the pos­sibility that we could be doing more to satisfy readers and within the limits of our resources, that is what we want to do. Given that we do have limited resources, could we be making better use of them in producing the articles for this magazine? What do you think? For example, many of the project articles in SILICON CHIP are quite long and detailed. Autonomouse the Robot in this month’s issue is one example and the article will be continued next month. The XYZ Plotter is another example of a very big project that has taken a lot of articles to fully present. And there are a number of significant articles to be featured in the coming months which are similarly detailed and have taken a lot of work for us to develop and describe. Do you as readers appreciate all this detail or would you prefer to see more articles with a lot less detail? Maybe just a PC board and not much else? And would you prefer to have fewer project articles and more articles on technical developments? And what about other areas of electronics? What about solar and renewable energy, electric cars or whatever? In the past, we would have taken the trouble to put a reader survey in the magazine and then hope that enough people would fill it in to make it worthwhile. Even so, it would then take months to obtain and collate the results. And would we be asking the “right” questions? These days so many of you have email that you can respond almost immediately, if you wish to give an opinion. So why not email us with your ideas? Keep them brief and to the point and they will be acknowledged. If you don’t have email, by all means send us a letter but we do find it much quicker to answer email than ordinary letters. Now we are also aware that people who respond to reader surveys are often the “committed” readers but we would also like to hear from readers who only buy SILICON CHIP occasionally. We would like you to buy the magazine every month, without fail. After all, we need as many magazine buyers as possible. The more buyers we have, the more resources we will have to make the magazine bigger and more attractive. So it’s over to you. Please drop us a line by email or letter and you could be doing us a big favour because there might be things which are blindingly obvious to you and which we just haven’t twigged to. I look forward to hearing from you soon. And finally, on a subject related to important magazine resources, Bob Flynn, our esteemed draftsman, has retired. On the one hand I wish Bob a long, happy and fruitful retirement. On the other hand, I regret his departure because it is proving to be difficult to obtain a replacement who can replicate his thorough approach to circuit layout. The position is still vacant as I write – see page 41. Leo Simpson