A Plethora of Project Boxes

As I was cleaning up after our little project this afternoon, it occurred to me that I am slowly accumulating a plethora of small project boxes.  I find myself picking up another one every time I go to Radio Shack.  In addition to the ones in the picture, I have two more in the parts bin...lol.

Anyhow, just thought that I'd share a picture of them.  I've had a lot of fun so far with these projects, and I'm looking forward to many more!  All that being said, here is a quick pic of my little project boxes:

Starting clockwise from the left, these boxes contain:

• Soundcard interface for APRS/Packet/and other digital modes
• PC interface for PTT desk mic and morse code straight key
• Control box for cycling through (manually, or enabling automatic shifting of) colors on my LED lit glass blocks.
• Simple Coax Tester

It pains me that I paid around $100 for the SignaLink and associated cables when I could have built an interface for around $20.  Not knocking the SignaLink USB, it is a great device, but I like building things myself when possible.

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Mic Adapter

I was recently in a position where I had a 2m radio that needed a new mic.  Specifically, I have a Yaesu FT-2200 that I picked up from eBay on the cheap.  This supposedly perfectly working radio had a myriad of issues, one of which being a mic with two bad capacitors.  One solution was to go purchase a new mic.  Well, this is an older radio, so they don't make mics specifically for this rig any longer.  However, I was able to find a suitable replacement, the only down side being that said replacement cost almost as much as I paid for the radio!  That wasn't gonna happen.  Another option was to rewire a mic that I already own to use with this radio.  The downside was that I actively use both mics, one for my Kenwood TS-440S, and the other (wired for the Kenwood), I use via my USB PTT box with EchoLink.  So I didn't really want to rewire either of those.

The final solution was a mic adapter!  It was a little aggravating to build as I had to cross between two vendors that do things slightly different (Kenwood uses two grounds, one for the mic, one for the PTT, while Yaesu uses a single common ground).  But it wasn't really all that bad, and seems to work.  Now I just need to get my Moxon mounted where I can use it, and I can talk on my preferred repeater without being all scratchy!

My Parts List:

• 1 x 8-pin female mic connector
• 1 x 8-pin male mic connector
• 1 x 1' length of mic cable (initially I used Cat-5e, which worked good also)
• 1 x 3" length of 1/2" PVC
• 1 x 1/2" PVC cap

Time to Completion:

• It took around 30 minutes to make, including scrounging the PVC to hold the male side of the connection since I didn't have a non-chassis mount connector handy.

Here is a pic:

This was an easy project that was a quick fix for a problem, and certainly cheaper than buying a new mic!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO