Episode: 2418
Title: HPR2418: What's in my ham shack, part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2418/hpr2418.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 02:36:32

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This is HPR Episode 2418 entitled What's in my handshack, Part 2, and is part of the series HAM Radio, QSK.
It is hosted by Mr X and is about 24 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is a description of what's in my amateur radio shack.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honest Host.com.
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This is Part 2 of What's in my handshack.
Sit back and enjoy.
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio audience. My name is Mr X and welcome to this podcast.
As usual I like to start by thanking the people at HPR for making this service available to us all.
It's truly a wonderful service. It's HPR is created by the community for the community.
The people behind HPR have gone to a great deal of effort over the years to try and simplify and streamline the whole process.
It's really quite straightforward so you must have something interesting you can contribute.
Just hit the record button on the microphone and give something a go away.
In the second part of the podcast I cover the remaining items in my handshack.
These include the power supply and I come 2725, 2s sub-jar meters and I can read TS940s.
All will be revealed. Sit back and enjoy.
Right, so I've got a power supply here.
It looks like a big giant CB power supply.
You'll use ones used to get very common in the UK, the Eurosonic power supplies.
But this is a 13.8 to 35 amp Eurosonic power supply.
It's got a big chocolate block on the front and I've never done anything like 35 amps from it.
Again, this was at a junk sale. It was a bargain, I couldn't resist it.
I found it ran a little bit hot when it was, if it was led just idling.
I use it very rarely these days.
So anyway, I put a very small fan on the top of it just to help to circulate the air flow or anything.
And now it runs stone cold. I couldn't believe what a difference a small fan in.
I've actually put a resistor in line with the fan so that the rotation speed is very low.
So you don't hear it.
Yeah, it's been a good power supply.
Because it's an old power supply, it's not switched mode.
It uses a big chunky transformer.
So it doesn't produce any RF noise that the switchboard power supply can obviously produce.
So yeah, that's my 25 amp power supply which I'm very pleased with.
Okay, I'll tell you what, I'm just going to turn that on because I'm going to need that for...
There's a plug for it.
Just plug that in.
Turn it on.
Give a fan of e-spin.
Close that.
It's behind a cupboard.
It's not a big redo shack, I've got it's quite small.
I remember a chap on you were used to visit and his redo shack was basically a few shelves in a corner space of the bedroom.
You should sit in the end of the bed sort of thing.
So it can be, mind you, he had quite a lot of expensive equipment having said that.
So, what else have I got?
I've got an ICOM 2725 dual-band FM transceiver.
This is analog.
Only the little radios I've got are these two hands as I previously mentioned.
So the analog radio, this is a dual-band.
It's also full duplex.
So it's got two volume controls.
Two channel controls and two squelches.
I've just turned it on.
I said on.
And on the left hand side of the display is reading 145 decimal 525.
So that's 145 megahertz, 525 kilohertz.
And on the other side, on the right hand side, it's doing 433 decimal 350.
433 megahertz, 350 kilohertz.
So that's 2 meters and 77.
Now, you can go to any frequency you like on either side.
So they both could be reading the same frequency.
Oh, that's something that's come through a bit of noise.
Let's turn the scorch up a little bit.
There's a scorch knob as I mentioned.
If you open the scorch, obviously you hear.
And that gets annoying.
So obviously I just squelched just to stop that.
And so the thing about that is that you can be,
you could be, for example, listening on 70 centimeters.
And while transmitting on two meters,
you can have a full duplex conversation like a phone call between another amateur.
And I feel like the thought of that, though, I think I've maybe done it once or something.
And I've hardly used the radio.
It's primarily meant for mobile use.
It's got a big fancy microphone, which has got 1625 buttons on the front of the thing.
26 if you include the PTT.
You can go up and down the channels, switch from the left hand side,
display to the right hand display, turn the power from low, medium and high.
It's got quite a high output, I think it might be 50 watts.
I'm not sure.
I don't know what the different levels are, but in high, medium and low.
But yeah, I've hardly, hardly used that radio.
So that was maybe, maybe in the days when I was a bit more interested in amateur radio.
I have, along with that, I have a NA SWR meter.
Let me just see.
It's a meter.
It's a box.
It's got a black box.
And it's four and a half inches by three and a half inches.
By two and three quarter inches, something like that.
And it's Revex SWR and power meter W540.
It covers a frequency range of 140 to 525 megahertz.
And so what SWR is, it's a SWR stands for standing wave ratio.
And it measures the amount of the ratio between the forward power and the reflected power.
It basically got to tune your antenna for the frequency you're operating on.
And if it's not tuned correctly, then you get reflection.
I think if it is, I mean, no expert in antennas and the theory of antennas is a very complex subject.
But I kind of visualise it as the radio waves.
There are certain wave lengths.
And for example, on two meters, there's two meters long.
And when they come off, when they go down the coax and get to the antenna,
the antenna's got to be the right length.
So the proper full complete wave falls off antenna.
And if it's a little bit short, then it doesn't, it's not the full wave doesn't escape.
It just bounces back.
And the more it's off by, the more it's reflected.
And you think, well, what does that matter if it reflects?
Well, if it reflects, it goes back up the coax and back into the radio.
And you can cause damage to the radio.
And you can cause the power transistors on the radio to fail.
And they're expensive to repair.
So you don't want that to happen.
So yeah, you want to have your SWR as low as possible.
You basically, the process of measuring SWR is you hold the PTT button down in the radio.
You then adjust a knob, which in this case is called calibration.
And you adjust it for full scale deflection as a weak cowl legend at the top of the meter here.
And then you flick it from the cal position to the SWR position,
and that measures the reflected position.
So that's basically all there is to it.
On top of that, the meter can also measure power levels.
It's got various scales.
It's got a four watt scale, a 20 watt scale, and a 200 watt scale.
So that's the SWR meter.
I've got another SWR meter here.
It's a welts, just noticed, welts, welts, SWR per meter, an SP220.
Why the heck do you need two of the things?
Well, as I said to you, the cover different ranges.
This one covers from 140 to 525.
That's a VHF and UHF part of the spectrum.
This one covers 1.8 to 200 megahertz.
So that covers a lower part of the band, the HF part.
It's very similar to the...
It almost looks like a clone of the one I was just talking about.
One's black and one's grey.
And this does 200 watts, 20 watts and two watts.
Yeah, same sort of thing. I forgot I had that.
So SWR meter.
Kenwood, right, so my HF set.
It's a Kenwood TS940S.
We had a start with this.
It's quite an old video now.
I got it secondhand.
Apparently it's around about 1986.
So roughly 30 years older radio.
Beautiful piece of equipment.
It's got lovely weighted controls.
It's a big tuning knob on the front nice.
And it's lovely and easy to spin.
It's all the controls are got nice feeling weight and they're not...
It's not all...
It doesn't all feel all cheap and light.
It's a lot of modern sets.
These days do.
But it weighs a ton.
It's really, really heavy.
I'll just take this off the snow.
So it'll give me some idea how big this Kenwood TS940S is.
It's another second.
15.5 inches wide by 15 inches deep by 5.5 inches high.
And then it's...
It's got this strange flap thing in the top of it.
I'll just slide it back.
There you go.
It's very strange.
You've got knobs and settings.
Carrier gain, FM mic gain, sub-disp contrast, memory bank 1, 2, 3, 4.
Call on off display.
100 Hz, 110 Hz, 100 Hz.
Scale, 1 MHz, scale, 100 KHz.
Vox controls, gain delay, anti.
So yeah, basically I guess you set these things up and then you leave them alone.
I guess that's why I've got a flap and it'll stop you fiddling with the thing once you've got it set the way you like it.
I've never adjusted these things.
I'll just close that flap on the top.
It's a bit strange that I mentioned obviously about the quality of the thing.
And if you remember I was talking about jack plugs and the quality of them and how they can be very cheap and poor quality on the both thing.
Or I've mentioned that again.
But this has got a very high quality connections on them.
I've got a headphone jack and it's like this.
I think you've got a guitar amp, you plug it in and you get this.
I just plug this in.
I don't really saw it snap.
I saw it snap me to take it out again.
So yeah.
I don't know if there's, oh.
Let's just count the controls on nothing.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 29.
There must be 50 controls on the front of the thing.
You first look at it and it just looks like we're wondering.
But generally speaking, the joy in the beauty of the older sets is that one control has one function.
It's all very well having bells and whistles and everything.
But to actually operate the radio, you want it simple and easy.
It's a bit like, you know, some cars, the German cars and such like have always been known to be a bit boring and dull.
Some plastic dashboard layout, at least used to be the case.
Not cluttered.
We were some of the Japanese ones.
It was kind of more cluttered dashboard and more difficult to more per nicity.
So I guess everyone's got their own sort of what they like.
The best thing about this video is, I'll just turn this on.
I think it must have been pretty amazing in its day was there's a button in the middle of the video at the bottom called Voice.
And if you push it, it does this.
7.10569.
So that's a 7.10569 if you could make that out.
Obviously pretty abysmal these days.
That's a voice synthesizer in the radio, so that I guess if you were a blind operator, you could operate this radio.
I'll got to push it again.
7.10569.
It's also got, where is it now?
I can just show you how long since I've used it.
An AT.T which is automatic tuning.
So it's got a basic antenna tuner.
And normally it's a separate unit and you twiddle two knobs and a thing to try and get your SWR down.
If your antenna is not tuned properly, you can cheap by using an antenna tuner to bring the SWR down to a safe level.
But this radio is buttoned and you can hear the motors spinning and turning and the SWR drops.
Now it's not as versatile as a manual one, but it crops as long as SWR isn't too high basically.
And I've just got a simple folded dipole in the loft.
I really don't tend to use HF these days, but I've got the radio and I wouldn't part with it for the world, you know.
The manual that comes with it is very, very dated as well.
It's very elaborate.
It gives you schematically outs, band plans.
It's head phones and microphone.
It gives you all the pinouts for all the sockets and whatnot.
You never get this sort of detail on a radio these days.
This is a setting confirmation.
What else?
SSB operation.
CW operation.
AM operation.
FM operation.
FSK, RITTY operation.
Each one of these has a double page spread.
The manual is quite big, you know, quite easy to read.
Eight and a half inches by 11 inches.
So it's quite a decent size manual.
Dual via 4 operation.
Just here.
Let me see if I have interest.
You know, section for all the add-ons you can get, none of which I have.
I've said that they could make more money by selling lots and lots of add-ons.
Maintenance and adjustment.
So you've got cleaning preparation.
The target take all the screws out and clean all the dust inside it.
And that's very strange, isn't it?
Imagine doing that.
The manufacturer telling you how to take the radio apart and clean it.
And then there's a wee pot and I forgot about that.
There's a wee pot on the side of the radio.
What was that for?
Carrier balance adjustment.
Oh, fancy that.
Side tone level, buzzer level, monitor level.
S meter adjustment, notch adjustment.
So I might not have to do all this in a regular basis.
You just wouldn't do that sort of thing in a modern radio, would you?
Semiconductor is easily destroyed if a circuit is shorted.
Trouble shooting.
Trouble shooter carefully.
If a defective resistor or capacitor is to be replaced,
you use one of the same specification.
This is the user-minus, incredible.
I've looked at this in the past, but yeah.
There's a section which I can't find in here, I'm sure.
Where it tells you on a regular basis you're supposed to, once a year.
I think pick the radio up, put it on it, hold it on its front,
and apply a spot of oil today, the fan,
because it's solid bearings or something like that.
It's not the bearings that are maintenance-free.
You've got to be spotted while on the bearings every so often.
I haven't done it for a wee bit, I must admit.
First of all, I did it, and I put the radio back down on the desk
and switched to oil in it, and I was only one spot,
and I was kind of careful, but it splatting up the walls.
So, yeah, oh, idea.
So, that was that.
The radio, because it's such an old radio,
was one of the first videos,
one of the first videos to have a transistorsized RF output.
Prior to that, they used valves,
and because it was an early hyper transistor amplifier in the radio,
it was known to be a bit, a bit iffy,
and they were quite easy to blow.
So, the previous owner said to me that,
oh, yeah, you don't, although this is 100 watt radio,
don't run at 100 watts, I was on it at 70,
and that's just what I've done.
So, I was on a real 70 watts, and I haven't used it for a while,
but it's still going so strong.
I remember looking at internet,
and people had all kinds of mods to try to,
because it's such an elaborate transistor,
it's almost impossible to get now,
they had to use some other kind of generic,
easily available transistor,
and then tweak the circuitry to accept this alternate part.
So, yeah, I don't hope not,
never have to do that.
I might just, you know,
know what would happen if that was to happen,
but I've got other,
some pieces I've got,
a dummy load,
which is basically,
I actually got it at a junk sale,
again, with a junk sale,
and it's a bunch of resistors all stuck together with the solder,
and you can use that,
so you can transmit into the dummy load.
Basically, you can't use a radio
without a tuned antenna on the back,
a tuned, you know, the correct load,
and if you do, you would,
again, damage the transistors on the radio,
and the output stages.
So, you can put a dummy load on,
and by doing that,
you're not transmitting live on air,
so nobody else can hear you,
so you can, while you're tuning the radio,
that's the reason you use a dummy load.
I've got a few boxes with connectors,
and such like in them as well,
too, missing pieces for the handsets and whatnot.
And of course, my logbook,
which date, time,
and UTC, frequency,
mode, power, station,
and report, QSL and the Marx.
It's a logbook I'll have,
one of these, obviously.
And yeah,
I think that's the final thing, really.
Well, that's been a heck of a blather, hasn't it?
From the 14th of April, 2003,
fancy that, too.
Yeah, so,
I think that's about it.
Then I hope you all enjoyed that,
and I didn't bore the parts off you.
Why don't you contribute something yourself,
maybe you've got an amateur shacking,
you can go through like I did,
or some other interesting hobby.
It must be something you can, you can contribute with.
Okay, that's it for this episode.
If you want to contact me,
I can be contacted at MrX,
at hpr.govolmail.com.
That's MRX,
AT,
the AT symbol,
googlemail.com.
So until next time,
thank you,
and goodbye.
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