Belcom AMR-217B, my advanced exam, and a couple of other things.

I visited the Hambleton Amateur Radio Society last night on the day of posting this, they were having a junk sale, my guest was with me and they also saw a few things in the junk that they liked and thought was cool, one of these was a Belcom AMR-217B VHF/FM Monitor, which I picked up for £5 and that money went back into that club's funds, along with a Heathkit meter and a set of spanners that my guest liked, nice to have some Heathkit stuff in the shack, though I'll have to make it electrically sound first.

I have some pics of the scanner receiver, front, inside and back, there is a sticker on the back that suggests it was sold at one point by a CB shop in Shildon, County Durham which as far as I am aware is actually still trading to this day

The receiver front panel, cardboard to protect tablecloth

Inside the unit, looks to be in good order, all but 5 of the crystal positions are occupied

The bank of crystals in close up, a couple of these don't have an RX frequency on them however I will be investigating this later to find out what frequencies these are on, though the rest suggest 2-meters

The rear panel, showing a serial number, a slightly damaged AC input connector, a fuse holder, a Uniden CB type power connector wired inside as per Uniden CBs, and an SO239 connector for the antenna

I plugged the unit into my power supply using the President Grant II's power lead and the unit fired up and scanned through the channels and a receive test done without the antenna plugged in worked fine, I'll be doing some further testing with this at a later date.

I have my Advanced exam booked for the 14th August so now have a deadline to work to regarding this, I hope to have it passed at the first time of asking and will be revising and doing two outstanding mock exams ahead of time.

I have had some external stress as well over last weekend so little time for radio and related however I am settled and the cause of the stress is now sorted, and I can now focus on my guest and radio

I also with help from my guest got our CB antenna up higher so I can be in communications range via radio from a bit further until, of course, they get their M7 which may be a couple of years yet sadly.

And that should be everything up to date for now

73 de 2E0EIJ

A creative solution to my 11-meter station problems.

Myself and my guest jointly cobbled together an antenna for 11-meters that we have dubbed the 'spider antenna', this takes the old DV27 on biscuit tin concept, adds radials made from galvanised steel wire used in gardens, 4 of these folded in half under the mount, which is a Sirio fixed body mount, this whole assembly is screwed onto the top of the wood.

The antenna was erected by way of cable ties to the window frame, and the SWR is actually not too bad considering how low and close to the building it is, the antenna is my springer/orbitor type antenna which has not seen use since 2015, an adapter converts the SO239 on the mount to take the orbitor's threaded connector, the whip was found to be seized up so a bit of fiddling got it out and got the SWR down (it was still set for the 106's roof).

not sure if it operates up on 10 but it seems fine on 11.

My guest and I settled on UK channel 11, the channel number is a reference to Netflix series 'Stranger Things' which features CB heavily.

73 de 26CT730/2E0EIJ

Quiet on the posting and radio front

Due to having a guest over at present I've been taken away from my radio activities, however I am still trying to get active when I can as my guest has in the past expressed an interest in the radio hobby.

I am also in the process of tidying up the shack, with some help, and hope to get that done soon too and a perhaps a stealth antenna for 11-meters to get my guest on the air and in contact with me without resorting to Skype.

I also as a result have not finished the video on the Yaesu FT2D, and just about to finish off my work for the Advanced exam and hope to get that passed soon so I can do all the things I still want to do.


I hope to get more active on air in the coming weeks

73 de 2E0EIJ