Musings on Radio, Computers, Technology, and Family
The result of building the Tecsun 2p3 is a nice looking portable AM transistor radio. If you made any soldering mistakes during the construction of the kit, they’re not going to be visible once things are inside the case. I’m going to compare this radio to the Sony ICF-S10MK2 AM/FM radio, a fairly common AM/FM Read More …
Last time, we completed the electrical assembly, and now, we’ll assemble things into the cabinet. I don’t have a lot of photos here, because I did things incorrectly so many times. I had to re-solder the speaker wires, as well as remove and re-insert the circuit board many times. Why? I didn’t study Read More …
Continuing from where we left off, we’ll proceed with the assembly of the Tecsun 2p3. Here we insert C8, C10, and C13 R12 Now we solder the volume potentiometer into the broken-off piece of the circuit board. Note that we leave the end terminals unsoldered at this time. Here, we lightly Read More …
Here I begin assembling the Tecsun 2p3 AM radio, which I told you about in this previous post. The Tecsun 2p3 has unusual instructions. They come on one sheet, approximately 20″ x 30″. It’s about the size of eight sheets of notebook paper. It’s not a booklet, but more of a two-sided poster. There is Read More …
I recently encountered the Chinese Tecsun 2p3 AM radio kit, and just had to get one for myself. It’s a basic transistor radio, in a very nice semi-retro case. I picked it up online for around $25 or so. Inside the box is a nice clear container with all of the parts. For scale, I’ve Read More …
Today, I am starting a new job, one year and three days after being laid off from my previous one. My “gap year” was great fun, with lots of travel and family time. I took the time to rejuvenate, sharpen up my skills, and find a job that suits me very well. Though there are Read More …
In a previous post, I described finding and fixing a bad RFI source that was making it impossible to receive anything on 2 meters except the very closest repeaters. I eliminated a switching regulator for an LED fixture, and replaced it with a noise-free linear regulator. The improvement was amazing. However, eliminating my worst noise Read More …
I took this photo in an elevator on a recent trip to Italy. Notice the buttons are labelled negative one and zero. In the USA, I’ve never seen an elevator with floor “0”, never mind floor “-1”. This elevator is in a train station, and goes between ground level and an underground tunnel that allows Read More …
A popular way of sending Morse code is to use Iambic Paddles. The paddles are a set of two switches. They’re connected to an electronic device called a “keyer”, which generates dits and dahs in the proper rhythm. When you press on one of the paddles, a series of “dits” is produced, and the other Read More …
Most ham radio operators know that switching power supplies found in many modern electronic devices can produce lots of radio interference. I knew this, but I tended to think of the problem as mostly one for HF. Since HF was working reasonably well for me, I assumed I didn’t have any bad noise sources, and Read More …