ATS-909X2 mod

[pnw73]

Overall, the Sangean 909X2 is an excellent receiver. I especially appreciate its SSB clarity. The scan feature on all the shortwave portables I've owned over the years has tended to skip weaker db signals. The 909 is no different. For DX, manually scrolling through the bands is the norm. The exception to my joy with the 909 is its tuning wheel. In application your finger puts downward pressure on one point of the wheel which creates a rocking motion. With the plastic tuning assembly, over time that movement cannot be a good thing.

My fix was this widget made from aluminum and attached to the wheel with double-stick tape. I like mods that are reversible. With a thumb and two fingers loosely around the knob, the wheel can be rotated with no downward pressure. It works very well.

This was machined on a small hobby lathe, but the idea could be duplicated by hand from various household materials.

 

[iMONITOR]

Very nice work, I like it!

 

[GB46]

Overall, the Sangean 909X2 is an excellent receiver. I especially appreciate its SSB clarity. The scan feature on all the shortwave portables I've owned over the years has tended to skip weaker db signals. The 909 is no different. For DX, manually scrolling through the bands is the norm. The exception to my joy with the 909 is its tuning wheel. In application your finger puts downward pressure on one point of the wheel which creates a rocking motion. With the plastic tuning assembly, over time that movement cannot be a good thing.

My fix was this widget made from aluminum and attached to the wheel with double-stick tape. I like mods that are reversible. With a thumb and two fingers loosely around the knob, the wheel can be rotated with no downward pressure. It works very well.

This was machined on a small hobby lathe, but the idea could be duplicated by hand from various household materials.

View attachment 105580

View attachment 105581

Looks very good! Does the 909X2 have a sort of tread on the plastic wheel? The 909X has one, and it keeps your fingers from slipping around during tuning. I use just my thumb, and find that I'm putting very little downward pressure on the wheel, if any. You'll probably want to leave your mod in place for good, because it doesn't spoil the appearance of the radio, and that double-stick tape can often leave a sticky deposit of adhesive behind, especially during warm weather.

I've used my 909X heavily for three years now, and the tuner wheel is still working perfectly. That said, I'd prefer to fine tune using the up and down buttons, so one shortcoming I've found in Sangean's design is that the up and down arrows can't be switched to match the fine-tuning step used by the wheel.

 

[pnw73]

Looks very good! Does the 909X2 have a sort of tread on the plastic wheel?....

The wheels on the X and X2 have the same surface texture. Manual tuning would be much improved with a weighted wheel on proper bearings, and without the rotational detents. Maybe with X3.

If you have any interest in the guts of the X2, there is a disassembly vid on Youtube. At 2:45 he removes the tuning wheel.

 

[GB46]

The wheels on the X and X2 have the same surface texture. Manual tuning would be much improved with a weighted wheel on proper bearings, and without the rotational detents. Maybe with X3.

An optoelectronic tuning system would be ideal, so that one wouldn't need to worry about oxidization of the decoder's contacts. The 909X is my alternate receiver, which I use mostly for listening to voice transmissions. It works OK for decoding digital signals, too, but the tuning steps aren't nearly as good as those of my R75 (as small as 1 Hz). Its metal cabinet also provides much better shielding against the RFI from my computer.

If you have any interest in the guts of the X2, there is a disassembly vid on Youtube. At 2:45 he removes the tuning wheel.

Something I'd never do. In fact, I've never opened the cabinet of my 909X. I have neither the technical knowledge nor the proper tools. Admittedly, I have been inside the R75 a few times, in 2003 to install the DSP module (a very simple job), and later to replace the clock battery. A couple of years ago what I thought was a malfunction made me hunt around in there, when it eventually turned out that there was nothing wrong with the radio in the first place.