I really don’t like throwing things away that can easily be repaired…especially when they are well made. Sadly, many of the manufacturers make it difficult and costly to get spares. I have an old Hozelock Polyspray 3 garden sprayer for weedkiller and the like. It works well and it’s easy to carry around. The rubber […]
Yaesu FT-897 Ceramic Filter Problem
The Yaesu FT-897 has been around since about 2002…they’ve sold thousands of them and they are still popular today. The FT-897 is pretty much a ‘shack in a box’ covering all the HF bands plus 6,2 and 70. Yaesu, at the time of writing, still have all the details on their website here…so I won’t […]
LSASS at 50% CPU or more in Windows 7
Are you still running Windows 7, like me, but find your computer unbearably slow? If so, it might be an intermittent problem but is likely to be present for a few minutes after booting up. First of all, make sure no programs or applications are running…especially Google Chrome. Make sure you have a list of […]
Kenwood / Trio TS-900 Extender Card
If you have one of the older classic transceivers, servicing and repairing them can be a real pain without the service manual…and the necessary extender cards, to lift your desired board clear of the others. Service manuals are normally easy to find on line, but the extender cards are rare. I’ve managed to assemble sets […]
Peerless K040MRF Midrange Speaker Repair
These units were actually repaired before I did the UHER Elite Series car speakers. Again these are from the late 1970s…maybe the early 1980s. At the time, the Peerless K040MRF and the doped version, were thought to be some of the best sealed midrange units on the market. I built a pair of speakers using […]
UHER Elite Series Car Speaker Repair
Way back in the mists of time, the late 1970’s to be precise, yours truly used to drive a Tahiti Blue Austin Allegro Mark 2, 1300 4 door saloon with boot (reg EWL 481S). Built in stereo systems and speakers were far from normal then; most cars had a hole you could use for your […]
Blekok Micro-40S SSB Transceiver
The Micro-40S is a single board SSB Transceiver by Indra Ekoputro YD1JJJ. I didn’t buy one of these thankfully, but a friend brought one for some TLC. These things are supplied rather badly, ready built and working. The one that came to me had a short circuit IRF510 output PA MOSFET. An easy fix but […]
STE (Milano) 2m VHF Tx and Rx Modules
I recently acquired a homebrew transceiver from the Angel of the North Radio Rally. It’s a 2m / 145MHz FM unit with crystal control, that outputs a heady 1W of RF. Crystals are installed for the local repeaters and simplex channels used in the 1980’s, when people actually used 2m before upgrading to a class […]
Kenwood TR-751E 6v Inverter Fault
The Kenwood TR-751E is an ageing but still fantastic 2m (144MHz) multimode transceiver. Like all things, me included, as they get older parts start to fail. The TR-751E I had to repair had been dropped, which meant the RF Gain / RIT dual concentric potentiometer needed straightening…the main VFO knob had already been glued. It […]
Evolve Theme Update
Just a quickie…I’ve updated my website theme to the latest version 2.0.0. For some reason half the header and logo images have been blotted out. In case you were wondering 🙂 …and now, 15 minutes later it’s sorted. …and today there is version 2.0.1, which fixes a few issues users have reported.