Category Archives: radio

radio

Mansfield Hamfest

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A chilly drive to Mansfield for the Mid Winter Hamfest was worth the trip.  
Note: eaesales.com 260.627.5871 had a great selection of Weller soldering station replacement tips.
Very interesting Leslie-ish speaker assembly from a Lowrie Organ.  Almost purchased it.

Hamfest Treasure Report:
KD8RIB embroidered hat
EICO Sweep Meter – purchased for the awesome cabinet 
Cobra 38WXST CB 
Radio Shack SWR/FS meter
Assorted old lamp housings
Popular Science from 1969
6 tubes of assorted TTL chips and sockets
Vintage EV mic
800-900mhz mag mount antenna
Headset mic for VX-8RG

APRS Tracking:

radio

FT8900 Mobile Mount

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The plastic bracket to mount the FT8900 head is a little flimsy and I’ll be removing it when I have the vehicle parked at home so I started looking for a more durable solution.  I ended up using a tripod ball head with a quick release shoe.  I found an inexpensive medium sized ball head from cowboystudio on amazon.  I purchased a pair so I can have one base installed in my car and one on my desk at home.

The head makes a solid mount that I can remove in about 10 seconds.

radio

TUSCO Hamfest

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Ended up being a nice day for a drive.  I finished building and installing the removable bracket for my mobile and had a chance to get acquainted with the FT8900 on the road.  I had been practicing scanning and changing the main without having to glance at the radio. 

I realized that I had made a noob mistake when I tried to check in to the hamfest station.  I didn’t have the pl tone to access the repeater.  I had been wondering if the tones created after a transmission were a function of the radio or repeater.  The silence after my attempted call answered the question.

This was the first hamfest I’ve attended as a ham.  It was a small fest relative to Findlay but I did find a few treasures: 

1$ plastic parts bins – can you ever have too many?

Alesis Micorverb – I want to add reverb to a amp that I build a while ago and I think this will do nicely.

PL-259s and some other antenna building supplies

A 3$ mag mount CB radio antenna in great shape.

 
Treasure of the day is a “new in box” Radio Shack Electronic TV scoreboard!  I remember having a very similar console as a kid.  I cant wait to dust off an analog tv in the basement and see if it works. 


– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

radio

Mobile Install

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I have a new vehicle and a new radio.  The radio is a Yaesu 9800 and I’m working on an easily removable rig, as my urban location is prone to the occasional stolen stereo.  A local commercial radio vendor was able to provide an Archer CB removable plate (vintage radio shack – the instructions are dated 1979)  to mount the radio and the faceplate is held by a cell phone / GPS cup mount.  I’m looking at a ball head tripod mount with a shoe to replace it.  Coffee ranks higher than radio on road trips!

radio, travel

Ash Cave Fire Tower Hike

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Enjoyed a couple of days in Hocking Hills.  We hiked the Ash Cave trail up to the buckeye trail and visited the Ash Cave fire tower (the tower photo is from the wiki)  After the stair master hike up i tried out my 2 meter roll up pole and talked to a local ham on the hocking valley arc repeater.  I had hoped to spend more time up there and see how far I could I could reach out with my 5 watt ht, but Mona was getting cold and we were loosing light.

radio, tentec

Ten Tec 1253 – FIN

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If you were listening to radio in the 1920s you were probably using a  regenerative receiver or “gennie”. The simple design made construction relatively easy and they could receive radio signals from all over the world.    The superheterodyne receiver  quickly became king in the 1930s but gennies have lived on as kits and diy projects.  I understand why, there’s something amazing about tuning in a station with this radio.  You can “hear” how the radio theory works as you tune in and jump onto a carrier frequency and listen the transmission that rides along.
 
The instruction manual is well written and pointed out the snags you find in a set of plans once you’ve  coached a few people through the build.   There were a few checkpoints to test the project along the way, the tests gave me confidence in the work I was doing.