# accessible ham or shortwave radios

Category: accessible Devices

## Post 1 by ka3m (Account disabled) on Thursday, 03-Jan-2008 8:57:53

This is where you can discuss which latest radio you might be using that's equip with speech or some other easy way for a blind person to orientate themselves using it. Also, in the true spirit of radio tinkering you can discuss radio mods as well. As a grey area as is because modifying radios are illegal, it's a part of reality for both C.B. operators and hams. Even the scanner listener has gone out of their way to put frequencies in to a particular radio that it doesn't have. I'm curious to know how many (if any at all) blind radio users are handy with electronics. Have you ever looked up a certain radio modification on the internet and then made it apply to a piece of equipment such as vhf and uhf? Have you ever opened up a radio and changed the crystal in it so it would receive or transmit else where outside it's assigned band plan? If so let's hear about it. Right now there's no form really where this is discuss openly. For example on e-bay Mr. F.C.C. is cracking down and disallowing anyone who sells modifiable equipment. Well here we're only talking about it so I think we should be fine. You ever owned a cheap CB radio with trick switches put in so it would go out of band? Talk about it here. I know that some of this is definitely going off course from the original topics but I want to include and encourage all aspects of hamming here so have at it.

## Post 2 by ka3m (Account disabled) on Thursday, 03-Jan-2008 9:11:12

From day one I've always been interested in modifying radios. The first radio I owned was a Washington Unidon. It's still sitting in my kitchen to this day. It's just not plugged in. Originally out the box it was a 40 channel rig made to operate from 26-965 (CB channel 1) to 27-405 (CB channel 40.) After careful searching I found that this radio could be modified to pick up the entire bottom of the free band and a piece of the top (26-665 megahertz.) The bottom being something like 28-005 megahertz. Right on the edge of the ten meter band. My radio friends explained to me at the early part of my radio career that all radios could be modified by just simply changing the crystal. I had various radio shack mobiles that were used for this. Until I actually got around to getting a real hf rig that covered all the frequencies and there was no need for trick switches, clipping diodes, what ever. Most of the ham rigs nowadays have voice capabilities. That is you can have a synthesiser built in to it to read you the frequencies. Some people refer to it as a talking VFo. On older radios that do not have the voice built in, there's an excellent program called ham radio deluxe which you should look up if you have an old rig of question. I have ham radio deluxe hooked in to my eighty's icom 735 and I can control and run my rig with the use of my computer keyboard. I suspect others have done the same or similar with this software. It makes programming and running the radio easier. Let me know if you've heard of ham deluxe? If not, do you use any other software to run a radio? There's also icanworkthisthing.com which has available manuals for some of the popular radios. I think Kenwood is a big one with them.

## Post 3 by ka3m (Account disabled) on Thursday, 03-Jan-2008 12:15:08

I was happy when I got a used icom 735 for 200 dollars by a former CB friend that had no use of it anymore because they moved and couldn't put up any antennas at their next qth. I had no idea of the problems I faced with it. I mean aside from the fact that the radio had no frequency read out capabilities accept maybe the screen on it, the radio would later stop working entirely. The modulation on it was so out of wack that it made the power output of the radio itself unstable. On single sideband you control power output by modulation. You're supposed to set the mike gain according to the power you're putting out. Most people run it three quarters to full gain. Well the radio now has to be taken in to have the guts completely replace and realigned because it finally gave out while I tuned to 160, a band I don't think that rig handles very good in the first place. I found out early threw a friend that some guy had made a program for the icom 735 to work on ham deluxe. Once I confirmed this and got the necessary attachments for the rig to my computer, I was not as worried now about using it. I got the patch cord to plug the radio in to the computer and ham radio deluxe uses this Micro Soft Mary voice to read the radio. It works real good. I haven't learned how to mess with it completely but I can control the frequency entry with my computer keyboard and that's a feature the icom never had. It has a rowder dial and you have to turn to the frequency you want. There's band selects you can use to make this faster but it takes a while when you're blind. Even my partial vision can be a strain if I have to constantly glance at the lcd display. So now the computer interface has given the radio a few features it wouldn't regularly have at least for that old beast. The radio itself comes with 12 programmable memories. With the interface however you get many more. Not sure actually, since I haven't fooled with it, but it's a lot more than the radio has itself. It's amazing that an interface was possible with this rig since it is a radio from the 80's. Even in those times people still used old fashion rigs like the tentec scout which required modules. I fuckin hated those. You had a group of modules for each band and you would insert one in for which ever band you were going to work. Like flipping on a record or something. These were small wooden wedges each had a mark telling you what band it was for. You put that in to a slot on the rig and than start tuning. That wasn't very practical for a blind person. Even if you had the modules labelled, you still didn't really know where around the band you were since that was visual because of the display. As far as I know those rigs didn't have voice read out. Unless someone somehow added their own in, and that would be according to one's handy ability. Which be interesting to find out with in the blind and disabled community alike. Radio's using modules was different for me because they were not all modes. The tentec scout didn't have an a.m. module from what I remember. No fm either just upper and lower and cw. I think you flicked a switch for cw. Otherwise nothing was better than the bread box radios that had all modes and a rouder dial with band selected switches like the icom 735 had at it's time. I happen to be an icom person because of my purchase. However the Kenwood variety of hf rigs were beautiful as well. Most of the ts series going as far back as the ts50 S all had voice reading capabilities. So most people operating hf that have a piece of woord are in good hands. People often refer to their Kenwood rig as a piece of wood. My two meter 440 rig, the duo band rig has a computer interface with it too. I'm sure it will run with deluxe but it has it's own software which you can find out about from the Kenwood website. I run the Kenwood TMV 7A. Which by the way is a thing of the past. They've made a few improvements since. This one has the software for programming and remembering all the frequency's you might need, and comes handy should the memories be reset. You can also run the radio with the program too. The radio itself can be program manually. That's how I mostly program it. It has a generic voice reading v.f.o. but the read out is limited. It doesn't read pl tones. The newer models do however so that's important to note. This one also doesn't read the menus. Which is more of a reason to control it threw your computer. It has a removable face plate and a bright blue screen. Looks nice. It's ironic that the screen gets bad after awhile. So describe some of your accessible equipment if any. Let us know of any little tricks you've used to get around certain things. For instant my dear friend Lora kc8gmt ran the old old old Kenwood 520. She says that she can feel the notches on the big dial to know where she is. I've never heard of that but apparently it works for her. So things like that would be little tricks people find around problems that could easily be hindrance in a regular circumstance.

## Post 4 by ka3m (Account disabled) on Sunday, 06-Jan-2008 12:38:58

Someone asked me a question once regarding the Kenwood ts 480S and I thought it would be informative to share it here now and my best answer for it. "When using the TS480 in CW mode, I seem to notice more "relay click when
> the auto-tuner is engaged, than when it is off. I assume this is normal, since, with the auto-tuner on, I'm now
> transmitting
> through the tuner. Is this a reasonable assumption"? I have to say that I haven't noticed any difference on clix with tuner on and I would not think they would have a relay going for the tuner. Another question that's often asked is what to do when the display screen on the Kenwood TMV 7A gets bad. Well your local company (if you don't happen to have a Kenwood factory) might be able to replace it for you. Kenwood should be able to but understand that the TMV 7A is a rig that's no long manufactured. They might be able to replace the blue screen for you should noone else be able to. As I've said previously, it's ironic that the TMV 7A would have a faulty screen since it has a talking synthesizer for frequency and some menu read outs. Some enthusiasts of six meters start off wondering what the best antenna set up for that would be. I believe mfj makes a six meter dipole cut mostly for the sideband portion
of the band. According to Kevin va3kky a former student at Perkins in the 1980s, he remembers that a student had a heathkit sixer
and put up a small dipole in his room. At that time it was mostly am operation on that band. Keeping in mine of course by then we were a bit late for that mode. Before that time around the sixty's before most of you were born, a.m. was the best mode and only mode for voice then.

## Post 5 by ka3m (Account disabled) on Sunday, 06-Jan-2008 22:08:51

You ten meter and free band enthusiasts will be happy to note that as early as 2009 (according to spaceweather.com) we're supposed to begin our twenty-fourth solar cycle. They predict that this one is supposed to be way better than the previous. So get those ten meter and illegally converted 11 meter rigs ready. You should be able to get some good DX. At some point I would like to figure out how to use the ten meter splits on my icom 735 so I can perhaps work some ten meter fm. Ten meter fm is magic. Just think if two stations not hearing each other can hit the same long distants (overseas repeater) it give them both the ability to work each other. Here in Rockville I can't hear other parts of Maryland or Pa or NYC in those frequencies. Anything short of 800 miles or more is considered short skip or sporadic E as it's officially known. I'm hoping to do some of that work. Even with out the fantastic Sporadic E openings experienced in the mid spring to the late summer. You people that have the illegally modified radios for the free band might consider securing a proper hf rig. You'll benefit in the long run. First if you do hold a legal technician's license, I think you get a piece of ten meters to operate phone. As they've dropped the code qualifications you might consider taking your general. I know in Canada they haven't completely dropped the code. If one person gets a good mark (90 per cent and up) on their written basic test, they are allowed to operate hf with out cw. I think they've left cw as a choice in case one is not confident with the written exam. I hope they keep the code for that reason (amongst others) simply so that people are not short changed because of lack of knowledge. In the long run if you take a test with a local ham club, you have a better chance of passing since their should be eager members of the club who want to see it's potential members pass. Most hams in general are helpful and knolledable and should be willing to help another college. Take this time between now and 2009 to get your act together and decide what you want to do to bring in the peek of the next cycle.

## Post 6 by ka3m (Account disabled) on Monday, 07-Jan-2008 10:35:43

Well I spoke to a Kenwood representative threw email yesterday afternoon and I ascertained that you can't replace that fuckin blue screen on the TMV 7A once it goes. Simply because Kenwood doesn't maintenance that rig anymore. So once it goes at least you'll have the synthesizer in which to semi guide you around a bit. Most of the new Kenwood mobiles have the removable face plate. I thought of a peculiar story regarding that face plate that is on the Kenwood TMV 7A. I was reminded of it yesterday talking to a station on hf. I had a bit of a time copying everything he said because he was sending a bit faster than I can copy and plus I was talking to 2 people on the phone as I was listening, but he reminded me of an instant where someone had purchased a used Kenwood TMV from some mysterious ham and the damn face plate was missing. People suspected that it was a stolen rig. That's not uncommon for ham operators (especially young ones) to break in to someone's car and steal a radio, any radio and go on the radio to sell it. See if anyone will meet up for a quick buy. I personally remember a suspicious meet between my late friend John ka1SYT and some guy he hooked up with on the air to buy a TMV 7A. The power cord was mashed and had to be completely replaced (like the guy just ripped it out of something--maybe a car or something) and there was no mike connected to it. Anyone who'll sell you a ham radio always has at least a stock mike hooked up so you can test it if not keep using it. Noone is gonna sell you a rig and expect you to get a mike for it. Unless of course you don't like the mike they threw in or that came with the unit. Because you can buy way better mikes. Better than the radio uses. In fact poor John I think got stung by this guy more than once. Before he died he was thinking of giving away some of these radios he bought as back up and for extra parts. (Yah pass the headache on to someone else) Seriously though he was handy with his electronics. He loved repairing things and making a bit of money from his endless friends that had broken radios, cordless phones, whatever. Sometimes he'd laugh out loud to me on the phone explaining some real minimal adjustment he made on some guy's phone, or something else, and now he was gonna charge him 80 bucks for it or something. When he didn't even spend a dime to analyze and correct whatever it was. I miss him very much and he's dearly missed by his friends from LARA. The Lockport Amateur Radio Association. Go to lara.com with out the www for more details about that club. I'm not a member but check in to their nets on 2 meters at 8 p.m. every Sunday night on 146-820 with a PL of 107.1. It's the w2RUI machine in Lockport. On that club repeater of their's I've made lots of dear friends. So even though I'm not a member I feel welcomed in their little circle. Certainly they welcome every licensed amateur as most club should. There are some snooty clubs around, but that's simply not them.