M0UAW's Blog

 One of a sporadic, few posts about my memories of radio, electronics, computers and whatever else strikes me might be interesting.   My first transceiver, an imported FCC spec Midland 100M, the very first contact was someone two streets away, maybe 150mtrs, because the final was blown, i had the stereotype DV-27 on a biscuit tin, no idea about SWR. I knew a bit about radio and electronics, I'd built a few things from Everyday Electronics and even modified them to do 'stuff', I repaired radios and cassette players for friends at school, more by luck and persistence than any actual knowledge but I learned. However, the insides of the Midland were a whole new level and I really didn't know an awful lot, plus I had nobody to ask, the internet was only a military research project called DARPANet so, as tempting as it was to tinker, I had to take it to the local CB shop and was mildly terrified because CB was illegal to use back then in the UK * (see below).   The owner was ...

****UPDATED 2026****   There's new spike protein mutations doing the rounds out there, be careful people    From 2022:   Two and a quarter years in, Corona Virus finally got me. I got a message from someone I'd spent 30 minutes in fairly close proximity with, two days after the fact they felt a 'bit off' and tested positive, they suggested I might want to test.   So, I did.    And yeah, wow, that red line appeared almost instantly and just got darker the longer I left it.   Cue a few days of feeling pretty crappy, sore throat, breathless, headachey and I've been vaccinated so I only got a mild case.   After effects, it ruined my taste buds, even the smell of coffee makes me heave now and even weeks after,  I can't taste properly, far worse than when I was a smoker.  

I'm not nostalgic about valve radios, not at all. This sort of thing leaves me cold.   I'm a fan of the sort of solid state radio where you can understand the circuit, the ones where if they have software it's only there to give a PLL some divider values and maybe hold a memory or ten instead of  the radio being a peripheral for a computer.  So when I saw an AKD 2001 for sale on eBay, untested for spares/repairs I put in a cheeky bid and won it for a bargain £8.  The AKD radios were reasonable quality little units with OK performance but they looked like something that was built from a kit with a microphone and two digit, seven segment channel display that are both more than a little reminiscent of a CB. They're also really dated (unless they've been updated after purchase) with 1750Hz toneburst for repeater access and 25KHz channel spacing which makes them less useful than they could be with modern repeaters needing CTCSS and often being on a 12.5KHz channel.  ...

 I know, I know, it's been a while.   Life gets in the way and all that.   Since I last posted, hmm,   New equipment (that I can remember, there is more): FTDX10 Anytone AT5888UV Retevis RT95 Baojie thing FT450 VR5000 IC-R72 Fairhaven RD500 Astron RS35  And, the current favourite, purely because it's so hackable, an AKD 2001 2M FM set which is due to arrive in the next day or two.    All the big name stuff is nice, I love the FT-DX10 for example, the Anytone and Retevis are cracking little radios and great value but for pure fun, the AKD looks to be possibly the best value of all and I've got plans for it which include replacing the original PIC 16C55 microcontroller, I may even document them here.          

 Season's greetings to one and all. I've been fascinated with GPS and GNSS in general for quite some time now, it feels rather miraculous that, for only a few pounds, I can buy a module not much larger than my thumb that will reliably provide my position anywhere on the planet to within a few metres by receiving signals from flying atomic clocks several thousand miles above my head. I've probably got far too many GPS receivers but recently someone posted an offer of free for the cost of postage receiver modules to the GQRP mailing list and it was too good an offer to turn down.  A few days later some nice little Leadtek modules arrived, complete with coax pigtails. As well as the modules, there was a zip file with pinout for the 1mm (?) pitch connector on the underside and a datasheet for the module itself. While they're quite old, they have a SiRFStar chipset which is a decent performer and I've always found them to be reliably fast to get and hold a fix.  Unfortun...

If your Baofeng USB charger base never goes green to indicate the battery has reached full charge, this may apply to you. Another indication of the problem is the LED stays solid red with no battery inserted, it should flash alternate red/green. I recently bought a Baofeng which was supplied with a USB charger which is convenient but even when I forgot to unplug it one night and left it on for 2 days it never showed 'green' and checking with a multimeter showed the battery was still under 8V (*never* leave Li-Ion cells/batteries charging unattended.) Turns out the USB cable has a built in boost converter to bump up the 5V to something high enough to charge a 2S 7.4V pack. Unfortunately the boost converter in my USB cable only bumped it up to 9.2V and the reverse polarity protection diode (circled red) in the charger base was wasting 0.8V of that so there's no chance it would ever reach charge termination voltage of 8.4V   A quick google showed the mains powered chargers com...