Archive for the 'Equipment' Category

CH-528 5.25″ Media Dashboard

Published on March 10, 2012 in Computers and Equipment. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Bought this nice media interface of eBay for around 33USD and I must say I’ve got value for my money.
It does not have any brand but it is marked as the moddel CH-528 though.
Anyway, it can read several kinds of memory cards, it has several usb ports and audio jacks in its front.
What makes it very useful for me is that I now can connect both old IDE drives and newer SATA drives on the fly without opening my computer or rebooting. This is a very good thing as friends and family constantly drops by with a “computer problem” which needs to be rectified. Hooking up a drive for data recovery is now very easy.

Here’s some pix…

Box
Cable for external drives
Front view

Rear view

Power, SATA, USB x 2 & Audio cables

Lid removed

Upper PCB removed

Another close up with the upper PCB removed

Unit in place

Simultaneously testing a IDE & SATA drive

View of disk manager with SD card, USB pen drive, IDE & SATA drive

  

Welltech wireless headphones – batteries replacement

Published on March 2, 2012 in Equipment, Mods and Repairs. 1 Comment Tags: , .
Welltech FKH51

I’ve got these cheap but good working wireless headphones branded Welltech 40699/FKH51a.
After several years of use the two AAA NiMH Rechargeable Batteries dies and I replace them with new ones. But hey, they will not recharge, what is wrong? Having a closer look at the headphones I discover that the battery cases have a protective device to prevent non-rechargeable batteries getting charged. This device is a simple contact spring that has to be grounded to the battery minus potential to enable recharging. So the solution was to remove some of the insulation material at the bottom of the batteries, and now the headphones again are recharging the batteries.

I have also done a small modification to the base unit. I have removed the small internal wire antenna and fed the signal to an external sma connector. This enables use of a better antenna which improves coverage when moving around. A simple antenna for the 850 or 900 Mhz GSM bands works god for this unit which operates on the 860 Mhz LPD band.

Here are some pix…

Battery holder. Upper left: Safety contact spring.

insulation prevents grounding of contact spring.

Bottom insulation removed from battery.

Modified battery on the right

External antenna connector mod

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

High performance SDR interface board – USB2SDR by SV1EIA

Published on February 22, 2012 in Equipment and SDR. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Got a new gadget in the mail today. Its the USB2SDR board by SV1EIA . Will for sure be busy testing this nicely build board for the next few days.

USB2SDR Board

FT-1000D frequency conversion scheme

Published on February 11, 2012 in Equipment. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

 

I have been so fortunate to be given permission to post these documents.
I think they are very helpful for any trying to understand the ft-1000(d)
conversion route.Thanks to to the author Scott K9MA for making this available for the ham community.

FT-1000D Notes

FT-1000D Block

FT-1000D LO

CG-3000 Automatic random wire tuner

Published on February 9, 2012 in Equipment. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Bought this highly versatile tuner a few years back and it has not failed me once. It is capable of tuning almost anything (within reason) Anyway, for those interested here some pictures of its internals.

New member of the shack: FT-1000D

Published on January 28, 2012 in Equipment. 0 Comments Tags: , .

FT-1000D

Just became a proud owner of this renown dx-machine.