[Yesterday: 3.4 miles. none today]
The radio station project involves playing stuff from a computer system. That requires a sound card. One of the better sound cards is the Delta series from M-Audio. They have been out of production for quite awhile but there is a regular flow on Ebay.
The whole package consists of a rack-mount unit, a computer card and an interconnecting cable. Unfortunately, they usually don’t have the power supply. The one I bought didn’t come with a supply. The supply needs to produce 9V-AC at 4 Amps. So, I got back on the net and found a supplier, I think it was on Amazon.com and ordered one. It wasn’t cheap, I think about $35. And I’ve been using it. But it stinks. The thing is basically an overgrown wall-wart transformer with power in and power out cords. Besides generally cheap construction mine makes a terrific humming noise that drives me nuts.
So a couple of days ago I got online again and I ordered a 120V-9V toroidal transformer from DigiKey. With shipping it was over $40. But now I have the guts of a supply that will give the level of current required without howling like a dog on a full-moon night.
I have a rack-mount AC power distribution box which was one of the parts of that mass spectrometer I scrapped out awhile ago. I’m converting it from 240 to 120 and I’m going to put the 9V-AC supply in there too. That will give me one power switch for the whole rack of radio stuff: computer, audio, transmitter, all of it.