Musings on Radio, Computers, Technology, and Family
Today I had the good fortune to be invited to attend the United Airlines Family Day event at San Francisco International Airport. They had a number of exhibits, games for kids, food and entertainment. But what was most relevant to my ham radio hobby was a display of the SFO Fire department’s Mobile Command truck. Read More …
Every radio enthusiast in the Western hemisphere is familiar with radio station WWV, which will have been been steadily broadcasting time signals for 100 years in October of 2019, if it makes it that long. If it makes it that long? Yes, the world’s oldest continuously operated radio station may cease operations, if the proposed Read More …
The Astron RS-35A makes a distinctive “Thwap” sound when it is first turned on. This is because there is nothing to limit the inrush of current that initially charge the main capacitor. This inrush can be hard on the power switch. I found this article from the repeater-builder website describing how to install an inrush Read More …
Most ham radio transceivers do not run directly off of mains AC power, but instead operate from about 13.8VDC, using something in the range of ten to thirty amps or so. In home stations, this is usually supplied from the AC mains power via a “power supply”. Keeping the power supply in a separate unit Read More …
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 …
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 …