If you have been reading my blog, you are probably aware of the loss of one of my radios. Well, ok, three, but only one of them was a ham rig. So I have been looking for a replacement radio for some time, and I finally found both a party willing to sell one at what I consider a reasonable rate, and the funds to provide that party with to buy it from him.
Actually I picked up two radios, One is going to be a replacement for my vx-150 in my APRS setup, the other is pretty much a straight replacement for my Kenwood TM-732a. Since I only need 2-meters for my APRS, and I am not looking for a lot of memories, etc. I found a Radio Shack HTX-212 on eHam. That arrived first, and I was able to use it to do some initial testing.
When the thiefs riped the radios out of my car, they simply yanked the antena co-ax out of the connector on the radio. Since they are all using [SO|PL]-259 connectors, they separated at their weekest piont. Yep, the cable came right out of the pl-259. A quick stop in at Radio shack, and I found a couple of replacement ends to attach. One for the CB antenna, which is acting as my antenna for my Kenwood TS-320, at least in the 10 meter band. The other on the cable still in the car for the dual band.
Turns out the two replacemnt ends have different properties. The end I put on the TS-320 has you strip back each layer of the co-ax and leaves you with a physical separation between the center conductor and the shield, as well as asking you to run the center conductor down the center of the connetor, and pinching it at the end. This gives a pretty good separation between the shield and the center.I have had that on the TS-320 for a while, and things look good with it.
The second plug went on a bit differently. It has a pin in the center of the connector, which is designed to slide into the center of the center insulation, making contact with the center conductor. The labeling tells you to cut off everything flush. I wasn't really happy with that, but aftermaking sure that I didn't have any shield wires running across that layer of insulation, I went ahead and pushed it on, and fastened things down.
This is the connector that went onto my HTX-212 so I could make sure it was making it to various repeaters, etc. It wasn't. Or didn't. You get the idea. I took the radio back inside, hung it off of one of my antenna's for the in house rig (my old tm-731a) and it seemed to be getting to repeaters ok, but I never got a response from anyone when I was on. Part of this was which repeaters I was hitting, Part of this was the time of day I was testing.
So my replacement Dual Band rig comes in, a Yaesu FT-5100, and I discover a couple of minor issues. Somewhere along the line, a previous owner had replaced the standard power connector with, well, something else. I presume it had been in a comercial vehicle or the user had some other good reason for doing what he did, but in any case I was left with a connector that wasn't going to hook up with any of the normal power cables out there. Not to worry, we can jury rig a fix until I can get a replacement. Let's see, a bit of 14 gage speaker wire, a couple of solderless spade connectors, a couple of scotch locks, and a bit of epoxy later, I have a connector I can at least plug into the standard power cable.
Oops, good thing I tested this with the power supply before epoxying things down. You guessed it, got positive and negative swapped. Of the three fuses that are in this wire mix, the one that blew is the one at the radio end of the power cable. I suppose that I will have to watch the other two fuses for a while as well. So I am out the $1.29 needed for a box of 15A fuses as well. Hmm, the epoxy doesn't seem to be staying on the solderless connectors long enough to set up. Ok, find some substitute for fiberglass to act as a matrix. Not a big problem, it's spring, and I have two dogs. They are shedding. (Ok, so I have no plans on letting this setup get wet, or for that matter be in use any longer than necessary.) Everything set up, and it's time to take things out to the car.
Hmm. we are back to that antenna connector arn't we. Yep, before I hang this nice new (well, ok, well used, but new to me) radio off of this antenna, I think I better make some test first. Got the power/swr meter with me, but even more important, grabbed the multi-meter as well. First test make sure the meter is in continuity test mode. Yep it beeps. Let's see, shield to shield? Continuity, good, Shield to center? Continuity, bad!
Time to pull things appart and see if we can salvage this situation. Yep, pushing the center conductor of the connector into the center of the co-ax pushed the center conductor off far enough that the shielding was able to build a connection. Ok. trim off an 1/8th of an inch of outside insulator, as well as that much of the shielding. Make sure nothing is making contact via the multi-meter, put the connetor back together, check it again, still good. attach it to the antenna end of the meter, attach the radio to the radio end, and give it some juice. Yeah, I get a repeater beep off of 146.76. Power levels are where I would expect in both bands, SWR is at 1.1-1.2, all looks good.
Well, there sin't anyone chatting on the repeaters, and no one responds when I say hello on 444.1, so I call it a night. Take the meter out of the loop, and head on in.
Next day I am out and about, and I hear some chatter on 444.1 so when things settle down I call out. Nothing. Hmm, not even the repeater beep. Well, on the first radio I put in the car the radio had the repeter offset wrong. So I swapped offsets. Still nothing. Ok, almost home anyway. I'll get the meters out here again, and we'll see what's going on.
In grabbing the meters, walking out to the car and it hits me. Tone! That's right I was locking myself out by not including that wonderfull 114.8 hz sub-audible tone in my transmitions. So before I disconnect anything else, I set up tone, set the frequency, call out, and kb0pjb comes back to me.
I'm back on the air.
Yep there are a few things that I need to get taken care of yet. I want the right power connector on the radio. I am going to replace the screw on connector with either a crimp on, or a solder on one. (I haven't decided which yet.) and I need to mount the radio properly. (It did not come with the mounting bracket. I will have to either buy some sort of universal bracket, or make one of my own. I have other uses for the tools to make my own, so that will probably be my solution there.
I also have to fix things up for the HTX-212. it needs to get mounted in the trunk, and I need to build the connectors to connect it to the tiny tracker. As it stands that looks like it will include binding at least two ground wires (possibly three) into the same 9-pin connector to plug into the tiny-tracker, and either replacing the tiny-tracker with an earlier version that I build without one of the resistors (the htx does not use the dc to the mic connetor to indicate that the radio should key as the vx-150 does) or break open the tinytracker and de-solder that resistor myself. Since I can think of some uses for a second APRS rig, Specifically to track my route as I ride the bike to and from work, I think I will go with the picking up another tiny-tracker.
73,
-Rusty - kc0vcu