A bit more surplus

A few days ago, one of our engineers left me a note to say he'd found a few oddments of surplus PMR kit, that I could have if I could make use of it. Gimme Gimme Gimme!

Its mostly Philips/Simoco PRP70 series kit, which Ive not made much use of in the past, since most of what came my way was U0 band UHF stuff. But of interest here is the later model PRP76 on the right, which is E0 band - VHF Low Band! That means it would go on 4m. All the radios work, but theres only two batteries, and they are very dead. Im in the process of trying to rejuvenate one of them at present through a combination of high current burst, trickle charging, and pulse charging over several charge/discharge cycles.

A few years ago I did have proper charging equipment for them! But I passed it onto someone else. Even once I get a working battery, the next problem will be programming them! I will need to track down a facilities connector, then the required software, and then probably breadboard up a programming interface.

Theres also a rather nice little Yaesu VX2000V VHF 40ch mobile rig. This will probably go quite easily onto 2m, and might make a neat little set for special events, or maybe for APRS. Ive been considering setting up for APRS for a while. I use the Mountain Lake APRS propagation website to track active and potential UHF co-channel interference conditions at work, and would like to set up a fixed APRS unit up at Emley Moor to contribute to the propagation monitoring.

More pressing, is the need to build a crystal controlled oscillator for Sams school science fair project. Based around the big old 10X slab of quartz I got from Rishworth, we are going to perform an experiment where we will test the effect of grinding the crystal on its frequency. I of course already know the likely results, but Sam will discover this for himself. I just need an oscillator that will work with a crystal of this size, and to build some form of holder for it!