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Ham Radio

Dead radio awakes

[Today: rest day; Yesterday: 20 miles]

We are loafing around this weekend after our 20 mile run yesterday morning.

I saw that my neighbor had his new truck and new dump trailer backed into his yard and I went over to talk to him.  He took me for a ride in his truck.  Very nice.  He has started a new trucking business and is just getting things going.

He mentioned that he needs to get a CB radio so that he can talk to the other people on the construction jobs he will be working.

Later I remembered that I had a couple of broken CB’s in my junk box.  I acquired them with some VHF radios from a road department a few miles west of here, proceeds of an internet auction.

So I examined what I had.  One of them had no receive.  It looked like the local oscillator was not doing anything.  The other one had a big burnt final amp transistor.  That’s pretty easy to spot when the transistor is charred and cracked and the plastic mounting washer is melted.  I transferred the final amp transistor from the no-receiver radio over.  It still didn’t work so I did a bit of signal tracing and discovered that a small chip resistor next up the line from the smoked transistor was bad.  I got one from a junk-box donor carcass.  And the CB is working now!

I count that as a win.

I need to get some fuses in the power supply lines.  Then I can take it over and see if he wants it.  He may want something shiny and new.  On the other hand, I could use it to listen to him and others doing the road construction nearby.