AB4UG Radioblog

Somewhere along the way, I apparently thought it would be cool to have at least one ARRL Handbook from each decade. Over the past few years, I’ve managed to acquire a few Handbooks toward that goal. Some I found at hamfests, some through the annual ARRL Auction, and some through SK estates.

The most recent additions were the 1980 and 2005 Handbooks. They came from the collection of one of my ham friends, Willie/WB4SOG (SK), who died recently. Willie was a prominent member of the local amateur radio community, and he’ll be missed by many people. I actually met him several years before I became a ham through his wife who volunteered with the same lab retriever rescue that I did. His friend Bruce/KI4YST brought several boxes of books and QST magazines from Willie’s collection to the club meeting for club members to take. I’m glad to be able to give some of his books a new home in my collection.

Handbooks from the 1920s and 1930s would be a nice addition to the collection. I’m sure I could find them if I looked harder. They’ve shown up in the ARRL Auction in the past, and there’s a 1932 Handbook in this year’s edition of the ARRL auction. Bidding on that Handbook sent the price pretty high early on. Probably plenty of old Handbooks on eBay too.

I haven’t read them all yet, but I’ve looked through a few of them and they give a nice look at how amateur radio has evolved over the past century.

The Handbook I’m planning to get for the 2020s will be the 2023 edition, which will be the 100th edition of the ARRL Handbook.

Speaking of the ARRL Auction, it seems like the interest in older handbooks is a lot higher this year and there’s been a lot more bidding on them than in previous years. Past auctions I think also had a more Handbooks up for bid if I recall correctly, so maybe that was a factor.

An Astatic D-104 microphone was my final, last-minute purchase from the Shelby Hamfest. We were walking to the gate heading out when I spotted a table I hadn’t visited off to the side and decided to wander over to have a look. The D-104 on the table naturally caught my eye, and decided to grab it.

This one was missing the bottom cover plate, and the microphone connector was removed. Looked like there might have been some re-wiring done at some point and two of the wires from the cord are unconnected, unlike my other D-104 microphone. The electrical tape on the wires connecting the microphone element suggests that maybe it was replaced at some point as well.

At least there’s no rotting foam in this one. The microphone element housing is also a little different from my other one. This one is basically just a ring with some bits of foam supporting the microphone element while my other D-104 is more case-like.

I’ll have to see what I can do about finding or making a new cover plate for this microphone.

I can finally get around to some of the things that have been sitting in boxes in the garage for the last year or so.

Here we have a Tempo S1 handheld 2m FM transceiver that’s had some obvious modifications done to it. The battery pack was replaced with a car power adapter, the original telescoping antenna was replaced with a BNC connector and, based on photos of other Tempo S1 units I’ve seen online, the earphone and antenna jacks have been replaced.

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Frequency selection is done by setting the thumb wheel switches to the desired frequency. A slide switch for the 1 kHz place lets you select 0 or 5 kHz, giving the radio 5 kHz tuning steps. In the photo, the radio is currently tuned for 145.690 MHz. To get 145.695, you’d slide the switch over to the +5k position.

Getting inside the unit is a simple matter of undoing 4 somewhat rusty screws. The back lifts off to reveal the radio guts and the battery compartment where the car power adapter was wired in.

According to the manual, an 8 cell NiCad battery pack providing 9.6V fit into that space. Charging the battery was done by plugging an external charger into the 1/8″ jack next to the offset selector switch.

The radio guts consist of two circuit boards. One appears to handle the RF side of things, while the other one looks like it handles the controls. It’s quite the nest of wires inside.

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There’s a single IC on the board with a sticker labeled NIS-103, which I’m guessing might handle generating DTMF tones from the keypad on the front. A few wires have been soldered directly to the legs of the IC so whatever it is, removing it won’t be easy to do.

An inspection of the components on the boards didn’t reveal anything that was obviously problematic. Lots of tantalum capacitors and a few electrolytic caps, but they looked fine.

Didn’t have 9V handy to connect to the power leads but I did have a 12V battery pack, so I connected that to the radio and turned it on. The radio came alive with static, which seemed like a good sign. Didn’t try anything else with the radio. I’ll work on making up a suitable connector so I can attach a 9V battery or find a suitable replacement battery pack for future experimenting.

Given the radio doesn’t have any CTCSS capability, it might be of limited use with repeaters these days unless they don’t use CTCSS tones. Still should be useful for simplex communications though.