Yeah, been slacking.
Gear is finally all mounted in the truck. TS480HX and TM-D710. Dual band VHF antenna ( 2M/440 ), 6M FM antenna, Screwdriver for HF. I still need a Kenwood Screwdriver Controller. I'd buy the one from N2VZ but he seems to be out of business. The only other viable option is the Turbo Tuner 2 from TennaTronix but it looks like a straight clone of the N2VZ design with no credit given so they won't be getting my money. The solution for the moment is using an Ameritron SDC-102 while I build my own automatic tuner which will be open-source open-hardware. Yee-Haw.
I'd love to find out that the TennaTronix box was either licensed or a fresh design but seriously its the same box and everything so I can't help but think at least they wanted it to be mistaken for the original? If its legit why not just say so? Email responses were vague or non-existent. Sad.
Next up for fun is hacking on my TS2000. Going to replace the ceramic filters with Murata ones ( you can buy them from Mouser, don't get the generics from Taiwan that you can buy from that UK outfit on Ebay. I don't get why companies get all furtive when you want to know where a part is from. Anyway, the proper Murata ones are standard parts from Mouser for a few bucks each. I also ordered some PIN diodes to do a minor upgrade and a Z10000B buffer amp to add a first IF output to use to feed a bandscope. Looks fully possible to use RTL-SDR as a cheap Panadapter which would be kinda sexy...
73,Tom K6AET
