Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Things I do for fun
EtherProg from Jason/NT7S assembled. Didn’t take too long. I think I’m getting better at this. I’ve also figured out how to keep the tip of my soldering iron clean, which, as it turns out, really makes soldering a whole lot easier.
Now to figure out what to do with it.
I need to find conical tips for my soldering iron or else get another one with easier to find tips. The new tips I ordered for my Radio Shack soldering iron are all chisel tip, which will probably be too big for SMT work.
Put the MFJ-208 back together and tested it out with the antennas for my handheld.
I think it works. The LED light comes on when I turn the power on. I can hear a tone and static on my radio at about the same frequency as what’s indicated by the dial. The SWR meter moves when I change the frequency selector dial.
I’m not sure I’d use it for actually quantifying the SWR performance of an antenna. Maybe useful for quick checks of an antenna. I’ll need to find someone with a good working antenna analyzer that I could use to compare to this one.
I happened to stumble upon a MiniLab II electronics lab that Jason/NT7S was selling. Seems to be an older version of this Mini-Lab 200 and reminds me of the old Radio Shack electronics lab kits that I used to see in their stores when I was a kid.
Along with the Mini-Lab, he was nice enough to send along a bunch of other goodies: capacitors, variable capacitors, potentiometers, diodes, transistors, 555 timer chips, ATtiny85 microcontrollers, oscillators, inductors, connectors and some copper clad boards. More things than I know what to do with, but I’m sure I’ll learn and find something to put them to use in.
My parts bin has fewer empty boxes now. I may need another one. I definitely need more workbench space.
An examination of the innards of the MFJ-208 antenna analyzer didn’t reveal any obvious problems other than the messed up variable plate capacitor.
Everything else inside looks pretty clean.
With a pair of needle nose pliers and some very gentle pressure, I was able to bend the plates of the variable capacitor back to where I thought they should be. Both plates are parallel to each other now and don’t hit each other when rotated.
Now I just need to put everything back together, add power and test it out.
Spent some time going over the innards of the MFJ-207 antenna analyzer I picked up and doing some research to figure out what kind of rotary switch I’ll need to replace the existing messed up one with. I think I’ve found the correct replacement switch (a Lorlin CK1025 rotary switch).
Everything else inside looks in decent shape as far as I can tell. I haven’t tried to test all the individual components yet. No leaky/bulgy capacitors or burn marks and all the soldered connections seem solid. Aside from the rotary switch I’m not seeing anything else wrong with it.
Now to go over the MFJ-208. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a variable plate capacitor to replace the existing one, but I might be able to fix it up so that it works the way it should.