Ramblings of yet another nerd…
So, I hang out with a bunch of gear junkies. This means every problem has some unique solution – sometimes with a little MacGyvering included. In this case, this is a solution just looking for problems to solve.. .and it’s quite effective. While either cleaning his garage, or working on his truck, my friend Tom …
Read More Gear Junkie: Lithium Drill Battery AdaptorI enjoy contesting…. and often do so with a second person as a logger. A couple years back, I picked up a behringer HA400 to split audio between 2 sets of headphones. It worked great except for one thing- it disconnects the speaker when I plug it into the headphone jack. I tried running a …
Read More Behringer HA400 mod
So… I am by NO means an expert… but I’ve had some thoughts on DMR programming before, and I have some additional thoughts to share. Contacts The radio can support a boatload of contacts – and there’s a number of places to download the US-only or US database. I load the entire US Database. It …
Read More Some DMR programming thoughts (a draft post)so it’s been a little while since I posted anything, but it’s been slow going. Using the citrus gel stripper that was recommended by the others in the facebook group, I took what seemed many layers of not only varnish, but also 75 years of dirt and grime. It took several applications, and several days …
Read More RCA 56×3 – WrapupSo, my 12 year old fixed a 26″ snowblower by himself. Well, OK, i helped re-mount the parts on the auger shaft, because they were a bit tough to get mounted, but overall, he did the tear-down and reassembly of the auger assembly, and the 2-stage portion. My neighbor gave me a TroyBilt Storm 2620 …
Read More If you don’t try anything, you’ll never succeed…So, after reading how the real experts do restoration (see previous post on this radio), I decided to pick up some citrus stripping gel to give it a shot. I also picked up a stripping tool, which is a step above a putty knife, but seemed well suited for the job, and some steel wool, …
Read More RCA 56×3 – Exterior Work Part two…So, the radio I bought was obviously not in the greatest shape, though I have seen some amazing restoration work by others on far more damaged radios. This one was primarily dirty, and had the normal scratches and paint splatters for a 76 year old radio. Given my original stated goal of making this unit …
Read More RCA 56×3 – Exterior WorkThere’s nothing really remarkable about replacing wires, except for the pile of insulation bits on the bench under the radio. It’s somewhat impressive when you consider those bits of insulation are 75+ years old. I have been slowly threading wires through and replacing them one at a time. It does become a bit of an …
Read More RCA 56×3 – work continuesPrior to receiving the tubes, I had gotten the electrolytics in, and replaced all of the capacitors under the chassis except for one of the square molded “Solar” brand mica capacitors (the only one in the radio). That didn’t change operation, except for reducing the hum slightly. Darn. I was not relegated to hoping it …
Read More RCA 56×3 – Work Starts
So, I’ve been having a LOT of trouble getting my MMDVM to cooperate and pass Brandmeister traffic…I could connect to the TGIF network, and got green lights on the Pi-star dashboard, but it was really difficult to figure out what was going on. I could NOT connect to any Brandmeister Talkgroups. On a whim, I …
Read More Picking apart the MMDVM DMR Gateway .INI file