DELARANEWS

Bob

Bob Dixon, W8ERD

Recording capabilities

We now have the ability to record and playback signals on any 144 or 450 MHz frequency. I have constructed a box that allows us to do that. The advantages are: 1. You can hear yourself to see if you are too loud or too soft or to bassy or too trebely. 2. We can record events for documentation and later review. 3. We can record voice messages from officials to relay to a recipient directly via recorded voice or by transcription to our regular nets for delivery. The heart of the recording system is a Sony ICD-PX370. This is an amazing recorder that was recommended to me by AC8YE. It is tiny, easily fitting in the palm of your hand. Some other features: Noise reduction. 160 hours of built-in recording time. Removable MicroSD card provides unlimited time and transfer to PC. 5000 recordings, organized by date and time. 60 hours battery life. There are so many features that the user manual is 186 pages long. Comes with a PC program that provides off-line storage and editing. Costs about $40 from B&H Photo. Because it is so small, if you had one of your own, you could easily carry it around and record what an official would like to have transmitted. Maybe the club should buy a few? The box I built is customized to my radio, a Kenwood TM-G707. It could be modified for other radios. The biggest complication is dealing with the 8 conductor radio and microphone cables. The box was made in the “design as you build” mode, so it is not optimized for size. Rather, it is optimized for simplicity. This is my second attempt; the first one was built around an ethernet breakout box, which turned out to be too tiny and impossible to wire correctly. This one is built around terminal strips, which are much easier to work with. The pictures below show the front and rear views of the box. Actually it is not a box, because everything is just fastened to an aluminum panel. Please ignore the neat nibbling work done to mount the ethernet jacks, caused by an initial miscalculation. would like to hear what you sound like, let me know and we can arrange a time.
DELARANews

Bob

Bob Dixon, W8ERD

Recording capabilities

We now have the ability to record and playback signals on any 144 or 450 MHz frequency. I have constructed a box that allows us to do that. The advantages are: 1. You can hear yourself to see if you are too loud or too soft or to bassy or too trebely. 2. We can record events for documentation and later review. 3. We can record voice messages from officials to relay to a recipient directly via recorded voice or by transcription to our regular nets for delivery. The heart of the recording system is a Sony ICD- PX370. This is an amazing recorder that was recommended to me by AC8YE. It is tiny, easily fitting in the palm of your hand. Some other features: Noise reduction. 160 hours of built-in recording time. Removable MicroSD card provides unlimited time and transfer to PC. 5000 recordings, organized by date and time. 60 hours battery life. There are so many features that the user manual is 186 pages long. Comes with a PC program that provides off-line storage and editing. Costs about $40 from B&H Photo. Because it is so small, if you had one of your own, you could easily carry it around and record what an official would like to have transmitted. Maybe the club should buy a few? The box I built is customized to my radio, a Kenwood TM-G707. It could be modified for other radios. The biggest complication is dealing with the 8 conductor radio and microphone cables. The box was made in the “design as you build” mode, so it is not optimized for size. Rather, it is optimized for simplicity. This is my second attempt; the first one was built around an ethernet breakout box, which turned out to be too tiny and impossible to wire correctly. This one is built around terminal strips, which are much easier to work with. The pictures below show the front and rear views of the box. Actually it is not a box, because everything is just fastened to an aluminum panel. Please ignore the neat nibbling work done to mount the ethernet jacks, caused by an initial miscalculation. would like to hear what you sound like, let me know and we can arrange a time.