Whatever Happened to Ham Radio?

[AF6LJ]

The lamp thing is easy to fix. just add a ten ohm resistor in a piece of heat shrink in one fo the lamp leads.
The smaller lamps are more sensitive to thermal shock than even the #47 bulbs used in tube gear.

I made the mistake of replacing the lamps in my Kenwood R-599 with LEDs, now I have the proper lamps and will be using them. I really find the white light a bit too hard to look at so back to incandescent bulbs it goes.

I got away with LEDs with the FT301,as they don't directly light the dial,but shine in from the edges.
I had to sand the surface of them,though,to stop them being too "spotlight" like.

It looks a bit "white",but not excessively so.
The incandescents had series resistors already,so I just changed the values.
Should be easy to do with lower voltage incandescents,too.

Another idea might be to use 18v lamps as I think that is the next standard value.

18V lamps are not a bad idea ether.

[xrunner]

Well I'm waiting on the lamps so I continued with the cleaning. To give you folks an idea of the dusty condition it was in, here is what accumulated under the speaker grill -

[AF6LJ]

That is a lot of sand...

[rickselectricalprojects]

Good luck on getting your Foundation license.  The hobby surely needs the younger generation like you to keep the hobby going after us old farts die off.  With so many different aspects to the hobby, i'm sure you won't have any problems finding aspects that get you going.  As for gaming being a social lubricant-I would rather see that than alcohol/drugs.

By the way, if you want to see my modest setup, you can look me up on QRZ.com.  The 3 radios listed came to about $1500 USD, only the VHF radio was bought new.

Tom, NW0LF

Yeah i would love to get a HF setup but i have to start saving up for a car soon so i can really afford $1500 maybe a decent 27mhz setup and i can talk around Australia but one day i will get a HF setup.
Thanks

[rickselectricalprojects]

I am 14 years old and i am studying for my foundation license and i do agree that younger people aren't really interested in ham radio but i don't think its a cost thing.

Considering you can get 2-Meter rigs for $29 on Amazon.

My oldest boy got his Technician ticket at 12 years old!   

Unfortunately the cheapest 2m mobile rig you can find in Australia is about $200[emoji22]

[piranha32]

Unfortunately the cheapest 2m mobile rig you can find in Australia is about $200[emoji22]

I have seen Baofeng radios on Ebay even for as low as US$10. With shipping to Australia will be a bit more expensive, but still should be much cheaper than $200.

[rickselectricalprojects]

Unfortunately the cheapest 2m mobile rig you can find in Australia is about $200[emoji22]

I have seen Baofeng radios on Ebay even for as low as US$10. With shipping to Australia will be a bit more expensive, but still should be much cheaper than $200.

I got a baofeng for about $50 aud but i was saying the cheapest mobile rig (not a hand held) is about $200 (a yaesu ft1900) if you ignore the Chinese liexen and QYT cheap ebay dual band mobile rigs

[vk6zgo]

Buy secondhand at Hamfests,etc--------there isn't a lot that a new 2m rig can do,that an old one can't.

I got a Kenwood TM201 at the Hamfest a few years back--25W output,& small enough to fit in a DIN space in a car dashboard.

An oldie but goodie.
It cost me $40 because it had no microphone.

[xrunner]

Got one set of bulbs from a US supplier. They advertised them as 12V / 100 mA.

I'm testing one now at both 12 and 14 VDC (remember the Kenwood receiver supplies 14 VDC to the bulbs).

At 12V the bulb actually draws 67 mA, and at 14V it draws 73 mA.

What do you guys think? Is the current draw at 14V that big a deal or not (keep in mind they were advertised as drawing 100 mA)? I'm going to leave one running at 14VDC on the bench this afternoon and see what happens ...   

[AF6LJ]

If you are concerned about the life of the bulb I would run it somewhere around eleven volts.
If you are concerned about damaging the radio the heat generated by an over voltage bulb can damage nearby plastics. Another good reason to lower operating voltage.

[xrunner]

If you are concerned about the life of the bulb I would run it somewhere around eleven volts.
If you are concerned about damaging the radio the heat generated by an over voltage bulb can damage nearby plastics. Another good reason to lower operating voltage.

Ha - well everything is OK. I was looking at the schematic and realized then that there were already dropping resistors in-line with each bulb. Of course when I measured the voltage at the burned out bulbs there was no current flowing 

I test-soldered a bulb at one harness and it had 12V full brightness and 11V when the dimmer switch was pushed. I went ahead and installed one bulb the right way and shot a pic for you guys - very pretty.

[AF6LJ]

Looks Good what a nice shade of Green.

[xrunner]

Looks Good what a nice shade of Green.

Thanks. I got the radio all back together again and it sure turned out nice. I'll post some glamour pics tomorrow. 

[xrunner]

Well here they are  - the glamour shots. A fully restored and working Kenwood R-1000 -

(No I didn't update it with LEDS per the purists out there  )

[AF6LJ]

Looks really nice.

[xrunner]

New aquisition - A Yaesu FRG-7700 shortwave receiver. This one is from a local ham wanting to clear out things. It works but it's grungy.

[Lightages]

Really nice work on the Kenwood. Too bad I can't get things like that here in Chile to fix up.

[Tac Eht Xilef]

New aquisition - A Yaesu FRG-7700 shortwave receiver. This one is from a local ham wanting to clear out things. It works but it's grungy.

Nice set; arguably the best shortwave receiver Yaesu made. The FRA-7700 is a surprisingly good active whip too.

Quick request: could you check & post the voltages on pins 2 & 3 of connector P16 (5 pin plug to the memory unit, or behind the blanking plate on the rear panel if no memory unit fitted)? And post the first couple of characters (build date) of the serial number?

According to the all the manuals it should be 11v on pin 2 & 13.5v unregulated on pin 3 (pin 5 is gnd), but the couple I've checked have that reversed. Curious minds want to know...

[xrunner]

Really nice work on the Kenwood. Too bad I can't get things like that here in Chile to fix up.

Thanks for that!

Quick request: could you check & post the voltages on pins 2 & 3 of connector P16 (5 pin plug to the memory unit, or behind the blanking plate on the rear panel if no memory unit fitted)? And post the first couple of characters (build date) of the serial number?

According to the all the manuals it should be 11v on pin 2 & 13.5v unregulated on pin 3 (pin 5 is gnd), but the couple I've checked have that reversed. Curious minds want to know...

I sure will - I'll get to it tomorrow.

[AF6LJ]

New aquisition - A Yaesu FRG-7700 shortwave receiver. This one is from a local ham wanting to clear out things. It works but it's grungy.

Nice set; arguably the best shortwave receiver Yaesu made. The FRA-7700 is a surprisingly good active whip too.

Quick request: could you check & post the voltages on pins 2 & 3 of connector P16 (5 pin plug to the memory unit, or behind the blanking plate on the rear panel if no memory unit fitted)? And post the first couple of characters (build date) of the serial number?

According to the all the manuals it should be 11v on pin 2 & 13.5v unregulated on pin 3 (pin 5 is gnd), but the couple I've checked have that reversed. Curious minds want to know...

That would be good to know, wouldn't be the first time a misprint appeared in a Yaesu manual.
The FRG-7700 is a very good radio.

[xrunner]

Quick request: could you check & post the voltages on pins 2 & 3 of connector P16 (5 pin plug to the memory unit, or behind the blanking plate on the rear panel if no memory unit fitted)? And post the first couple of characters (build date) of the serial number?

According to the all the manuals it should be 11v on pin 2 & 13.5v unregulated on pin 3 (pin 5 is gnd), but the couple I've checked have that reversed. Curious minds want to know...

The manual is wrong - mine is 14.7 on P2 and 10.3 on P3

The SN is a little confusing.

SN on the outside is: 1I110212. On this sticker the first two symbols - the "1I" is stamped with a little different ink than the rest of the number.

SN on the inside sticker is: 110212

EDIT: Oh wait there is a SN on the memory unit too. It's P1J070766

[xrunner]

A friend wanted me to look at his FT-8500 yesterday. Seems that it stops transmitting on VHF when it gets hot. He said he got a new power amp module and swapped it and it exhibited the same problem. I put it on the bench and it did indeed stop transmitting when it got hot. It's been in service 10 years in a static setup doing Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS).

So far I've removed the power module and cleaned up the area. I did notice part of the circuit board peeling up in one area. I'm going to put the new power module back in and do some testing.

[Tac Eht Xilef]

Quick request: could you check & post the voltages on pins 2 & 3 of connector P16 (5 pin plug to the memory unit, or behind the blanking plate on the rear panel if no memory unit fitted)? And post the first couple of characters (build date) of the serial number?

According to the all the manuals it should be 11v on pin 2 & 13.5v unregulated on pin 3 (pin 5 is gnd), but the couple I've checked have that reversed. Curious minds want to know...

The manual is wrong - mine is 14.7 on P2 and 10.3 on P3

Magic - thanks for confirming that!

(Some of the FRG-7700 fan-folk around the traps are a little ... let's say "odd". A friend of mine once asked the same question on a couple of Ham/SWL groups/mailing lists and ended up with a huge argument from non-technical people who swore black & blue that the manual was right and he was wrong, stupid, and that the sets we'd checked had obviously been tampered with...)

edit: the 14.7v is OK - it's unregulated, and basically only feeds the audio amp and a few zener regulators around the circuit - but the 10.3v is a bit low (should be closer to the regulated 11v).

The SN is a little confusing.

SN on the outside is: 1I110212. On this sticker the first two symbols - the "1I" is stamped with a little different ink than the rest of the number.

SN on the inside sticker is: 110212

EDIT: Oh wait there is a SN on the memory unit too. It's P1J070766

Ta. "1"=1981, "I"=September & "J"=October. It also indicates that it was assembled in the factory without a memory unit (no "M" prefix on the set), and the memory unit was added later ("P" prefix - presumably for "part" - on the memory unit). Probably as a dealer/distributor add-on, since the dates are so close.

FWIW, the other sets we'd seen were also 1981 builds (my own is 1I, and I think his was 1H), so I wouldn't swear that bit of the manual is wrong for all sets - but it certainly seems it is for late 1981 builds. And good to know it's also the case for sets with memory units, since none of the ones we'd checked had them fitted.

The reason I asked - I worked with a friend on that, and have inherited it completely after he passed away.

[xrunner]

(Some of the FRG-7700 fan-folk around the traps are a little ... let's say "odd". A friend of mine once asked the same question on a couple of Ham/SWL groups/mailing lists and ended up with a huge argument from non-technical people who swore black & blue that the manual was right and he was wrong, stupid, and that the sets we'd checked had obviously been tampered with...)

LOL - OK. 

Found out what was wrong with the FT-9500. A transistor that switches VCC to the PA had apparently had some separation under it from the circuit board and wasn't transferring heat to the heat sink, which is under the circuit board. I pulled it to test it and found it was OK. After soldering it back on, the problem was fixed. 

[AF6LJ]

Good catch.