Red Squirrel's radio blog
My activities on the air and related stuff
Wednesday, 17 April 2024
A very special Midland 3001 has landed
Saturday, 25 June 2022
Plans to sell refurbished and repaired CB radios
A money-making idea I've wanted to do for a while is repair and sell on older CB radio equipment, as I do have the know how to do this, and will ensure it's done properly, even undoing bad repair jobs done in the past by "rig doctors" and "screwdriver experts" as they are almost always people that claim to know what they are doing but in fact do not, like any transmitting radio a CB radio MUST be set up properly so as to be able to produce up to the legal power output and do it cleanly.
I have been putting together service diagrams to put my plan into action, as I need these, to do the job, I have a spectrum analyser however I cannot just connect a CB radio into it as I need to attenuate the output to avoid blowing it up, so a suitable attenuator is needed, the tinySA website links to one that should do the job, the spectrum analyser is needed to ensure very little of what the CB under test and repair transmits falls within 54-55MHz, as a lot of "rig doctors" will often tamper with the harmonic trap coil not realising why it is there, I need to order a frequency counter and signal generator and though the tinySA works as one it will not go low enough to set up a CB receive section properly.
I also need to order trimmer tools, another thing "rig doctors" and "screwdriver experts" tend to do is use screwdrivers in the variable inductor and transformer cores which breaks them making repairs for people with the right tools hard, most of the time these cores can be turned around and reinserted, which I had to do on my Uniden Uniace 100 (which I'm not planning to sell as it is a personal restoration project).
I have a Zetagi Model 203 power meter, a meter that reads power between 3-30MHz but it still is not the best instrument for the job, it will let me know IF I have peaked each stage of the transmitter correctly and also flag up if the transmitter final transistor is not working as it's been blown by high SWR in the past and the set basically scrapped for that reason alone.
I do have a Philips oscilloscope however it's an older CRT one and I am sensitive to the flicker it produces so do not often use it, so I'd have to get an LCD scope in its place, usually to help sort out the FM discriminator, the Maxon based CBs (Midland and Maxcom and a few others) are known for that going out of alignment.
I also need to get in a SINAD meter, these fetch ridiculous amounts of money on eBay and are often in America and don't stay on for long, so I have to build one, and found a circuit that should do the job and will get parts for that too, this is more to set up the receiver but the service details I found for the Uniden chassis suggests an AC voltmeter across the speaker terminals and the adjustments done for highest reading on the meter, not the best but it seems to work but I would prefer the SINAD meter route and the instrument does not have to be 100% spot on, just as long as it shows the receiver is properly set up.
Some radios are known for failing electrolytic capacitors (my own Uniden Uniace 100 is tarred with that brush) so I need to keep a stock of these, I have a stock of resistors so far but obviously need the other components, sadly some components such as the Sanyo LC7136/7137 and some kinds of transistors are long since discontinued so are close to unobtainable, crystals are also expensive and I'd only buy them IF I come across radios that are out of specification and cannot be pulled up to frequency properly.
On the sale side once the radios come out the other end and I sell them on car boot sales I need to be able to accept payment, many people don't carry cash now so I figured a card reader would be a good option, I can get one for about £30 and it would pair with my phone to connect it to the transaction system, I'm not planning to sell them via eBay, I may attend smaller radio rallies to sell them on too, however most hams by old CBs for conversion to 10-meters and I don't know many people from the CB side of things that will go to these events.
So time to put my knowledge of radio to making money, and promote wider use of CB, it still has a place in 2022 despite the mobile phone being common, and of course unlike mobile phones it is perfectly legal to use CB while driving.
73 de M0WNU/26CT730 (or just red squirrel on CB will suffice)
Friday, 10 June 2022
Update to the Uniden Uniace 100 repair
Thursday, 2 June 2022
Uniden Uniace 100 repair project
Thursday, 26 May 2022
6 years since I was betrayed
- was monitored over P25 radios by the Savannah, GA Sheriff's department abusing said radios issued to the local Civil Air Patrol squadron that he was a member of at the time and the FCC and the Savannah Sheriff's department did nothing even when he admitted it on ##hamradio on the now-defunct freenode IRC network (which he did and also openly admitted the decryption keys were leaked and he took control of them)
- Openly admitted to targeting vulnerable WiFi routers when a flaw in the encryption was leaked, again on ##hamradio on the now-defunct freenode
- Gave a then newly-licensed ham some very irresponsible, dangerous and illegal advice on /r/amateurradio on reddit
- Made false accusations about the 'theft' of a clickbait image going around on reddit that actually had been for many many months prior to that, his modus operandi is generally to make false accusations
- And at one point, for clearly committing a serious violation of the network's rules, he was given a network-wide ban from IRC network Snoonet that had lapsed in August 2019.
Wednesday, 16 March 2022
Blackpool Rally 2022 attendance confirmed and possible activation of Blackpool tower (not with an unfiltered Baofeng)
So I have made arrangements to be at the NARSA rally at Blackpool on the 24th April, I will be spending that weekend in Blackpool at the Norbreck Castle Hotel, and I plan to go up to the top of Blackpool Tower and do some operating, following up on Lewis M3HHY's "Baofeng the fatal flaw" video's technical aspect, that being Baofeng radios lack front-end filtering or it's woefully inadequate, whereas my Yaesu FT2D should be a little better up there but of course all radios are subject to desense from strong out-of-band signals.
So to add some extra help to get rid of the nasty stuff I will be getting hold of a SOTABeams bandpass filter that screws into the antenna socket of the radio and the antenna then screws onto that, the idea here being that this filters out the worst of the offending out-of-band signals, these being broadcast and commercial from the top of Blackpool Tower.
I will be beaconing APRS from up on the tower should I make it up there as my FT2D can do that, of course this depends on weather as the top of the tower is usually closed during really bad weather and my previous visit to Blackpool did not take me up the tower for this very reason and I was hoping this was going to happen in 2020 but certain virus issues got in the way as we know.
I look forward to the weekend and if I make it up the tower and can get through the mush at the top contacting stations far and wide and poitentially as far as GD (Isle of Man) and you'll see my results and the rally on my YouTube channel after the rally
73 de M0WNU