Radio Experimenter Blog

A good friend of mine, Darren, KJ4EQJ, came over yesterday.  We were going to see about powering up his HF radio that he bought real cheap and a handheld he got even cheaper; Free!  The HF radio is a Swan 100MXA.   It covers 80 - 10 meters in SSB & CW.  It’s got a rather unique power adapter on the back of it that we couldn’t find a way to get power to it in the time and equipment that we had.  Remember I still haven’t gotten all my stuff organized.

The power connector on the back is a 6 pin adapter with the following pinout:

• Pin 1: 13.6 + VDC (in)
• Pin 2:  Ground (in)
• Pin 3: Ground for accessories (out)
• Pin 4: 13.6 + VDC (in)
• Pin 5: Ground (in)
• Pin 6: 13.6 + VDC for accessories (out, 2A fused)

One problem we had was trying to find out what was pin 1, since nothing was labelled.  We ended up opening the case to find out the pinout.  It was pretty easy to tell which pin was which, once you saw the wires going to them.

Pins 1 and 4 are paralleled together as well as pins 2 and 5.  This prevents a voltage dropout during transmit at the highest power (100 Watts).  Unfortunately, we were never able to get any power to it, so we still don’t even know if the radio works.  It’s look in good shape though.  Not as good as the stock photo above though.

As for the handheld, it turns out it just needs a new battery.  The radio is a RadioShack HTX-202.  We powered it up with the external power jack and it worked flawlessly from what we could tell.  We had no problems going to any frequency and talking to my handheld or a nearby repeater.

I gave him the power cord so he could use it until he gets a battery for it.  I also gave him an old ARRL repeater directory from 2003-2004, since the repeaters in our area are mostly all very established so he could program the radio.

The radio only has 16 memories, but only 12 of them are regular memories.  The first is the Calling frequency and then it has three priority memories.

After months and months of doing lots of projects during the summer for myself/other people, mostly other people, even though I throughly enjoyed the activies, it’s time for me to get organized.

I’ve unloaded all the equipment from my car, or rather the car that I was being loaned.  I’ve got it all in my garage, a cart/wagon that I pull behind my lawnmower, and my radio shack.  So far I don’t have anything in my shack setup, since it’s all been taken apart for demos, Field Day, trips to Hamfest, like Dayton.

Now all I have to do is organize all my stuff! :)  That could be pretty difficult tasks, since I’ve got some of everything a Ham Radio Operator could ever want, except a bunch of Vacuum Tubes.  I actually don’t own a single item with any tubes.  Not that I don’t like them, I’ve just followed the digital path since the beginning of my education in radios; not that I’ve ever had any formal training in radio communications either.  So I unfortunately don’t really know much about them, except that they are the original "transistors."

So hopefully you’ll soon see a blog about how organized my stuff is becoming.

This is my first blog. For the Radio Experimenter website.  I’ll be updating this regularly to show all the radio and electronics work that I am doing.  If you’re interested in Amateur Radio or other radio work and want to follow my projects, then just follow along as I update them.  I will probably not update this daily, however I will maintain it as I do anything Amateur Radio or Electronics related.