A new UK sign up.

[G6FGO]

Hi, I have been looking for a forum to call "home" for a while. I was a contributor to another vintage radio forum, but the petty rules and moderator heavy handedness told me that the time had come to find somewhere that my contributions would be valued.

I do a lot of homebrew and use various PMR conversions for the amateur bands. I run motorcycle mobile on 2m / 70cm which works well.

Currently I am working on an acquaintance's Marconi RC690 from a Granada Mk2 which I have got working as originally installed and have logged the first 100 channel frequencies.






That is about as far as I have got, due to the dearth of technical information regarding the programming. The database is held in a 64k battery backed RAM IC and is reloaded with a Marconi "fill gun" should one be available with the software to build the database. The owner wants to show his Police car and have the radio receiving "comm's" of some sort.

The radio is an AM model, which means that even reprogrammed to 2m, it still needs an FM conversion. Once again, no information on that either, is to be found. Next idea was to build a converter to put one or two active air band channels onto it. Fall back plan is to go into the audio board and provide an "aux" input and he can use a tablet with some scanner app on it.

 

[Ubbe]

My brother has a vintage Dodge Dart with an original AM only radio. I lifted the audio wire from the top of its volume control and soldered a cable with a 3,5mm plug at the other end and he plug that into his mobile phone and use its FM radio feature and can of course also stream.

The cable are routed to the glove compartment. Now I have a £10 Blu tooth handsfree adapter with a 3.5mm input that are paired to his phone and doesn't need to use the cable. That small BT adapter, 60x10x10mm could hide inside the radio, being charged by a 5V inside it, but would then need a button to be accessed from outside to sync it again if the pairing are lost. If there where an electrical switch available on the front of the radio I could use that but all buttons are mechanical that just moves the dial over the AM scale.

Maybe you can free one of the front buttons in the Marconi to be used as pairing button and perhaps relocate the BT adapters own LED to the front or use a dot segment of its own LEDs as an indicator.

/Ubbe

 

[G6FGO]

My brother has a vintage Dodge Dart with an original AM only radio. I lifted the audio wire from the top of its volume control and soldered a cable with a 3,5mm plug at the other end and he plug that into his mobile phone and use its FM radio feature and can of course also stream.

The cable are routed to the glove compartment. Now I have a £10 Blu tooth handsfree adapter with a 3.5mm input that are paired to his phone and doesn't need to use the cable. That small BT adapter, 60x10x10mm could hide inside the radio, being charged by a 5V inside it, but would then need a button to be accessed from outside to sync it again if the pairing are lost. If there where an electrical switch available on the front of the radio I could use that but all buttons are mechanical that just moves the dial over the AM scale.

Maybe you can free one of the front buttons in the Marconi to be used as pairing button and perhaps relocate the BT adapters own LED to the front or use a dot segment of its own LEDs as an indicator.

/Ubbe

Interesting thought, thank you.

 

[mmckenna]

The owner wants to show his Police car and have the radio receiving "comm's" of some sort.

A radio tech that worked for a local company had a perfectly restored 1973 Ford 3/4 ton pickup. He wanted a similar setup. He took a control head from a period correct Motorola radio and a well hidden modern Motorola radio and wired it up. The historically accurate control head on the dash gave him on/off/volume plus the correct microphone.

 

[G6FGO]

A radio tech that worked for a local company had a perfectly restored 1973 Ford 3/4 ton pickup. He wanted a similar setup. He took a control head from a period correct Motorola radio and a well hidden modern Motorola radio and wired it up. The historically accurate control head on the dash gave him on/off/volume plus the correct microphone.

I am moving towards the idea of just injecting audio at the end of the IF strip, either hardwired or Bluetooth. Problem with Bluetooth is that the base unit is designed to be RF tight!

 

[Ubbe]

But you will have no need for the radios antenna connector, so solder a wire from the BT transmitters antenna circuit to the radios antenna connector to let some RF pass in and out of the radio. Or probably even better, route the antenna signal to behind the LED display.

/Ubbe

 

[K3YGX]

I hear ya about some of them 'moderators' --- I recently gave a major one a kick to the curb myself.
Welcome to this most interesting site.

 

[G6FGO]

I hear ya about some of them 'moderators' --- I recently gave a major one a kick to the curb myself.
Welcome to this most interesting site.

Thank you. The site I refer to is unbelievable. It is run by someone who hates vehicles and a mention of anything related, even on topic can get you banned. I got put on the naughty step for enquiring of a moderator, why they felt it advantageous to close well behaved threads. I have only ever seen it happen there (and surprisingly here). So just for asking a question about policy, I was censured. Since then I have posted a few times to help other people and each time my contribution was binned. My first post in this thread for instance would not be permitted and indeed a version of it was deleted by mods.

Many of the members who post are all scared of their own shadows, driven by dire "Elfin safe tea" warnings from the mods; honestly, it's pathetic. I think that life in NK might be more easy going.

 

[G6FGO]

But you will have no need for the radios antenna connector, so solder a wire from the BT transmitters antenna circuit to the radios antenna connector to let some RF pass in and out of the radio. Or probably even better, route the antenna signal to behind the LED display.

/Ubbe

It's a thought, but the control head is just that, most of the electronics are in the remote mount part, but it is still useful food for thought.

If it were mine, I would be doing all sorts of things with it, but all he wants is to hear any sort of communications, for his display at car shows.

 

[Ubbe]

For just be working at car shows I would try and program the display to show police or something and then have an old mobile phone with a 3,5 plug and cable connected to the base unit somewhere that gets speaker audio and can be set by the volume controller and then make a MP3 file with conversations from Broadcastify and play in a loop with a suitable app.

/Ubbe

 

[G6FGO]

For just be working at car shows I would try and program the display to show police or something and then have an old mobile phone with a 3,5 plug and cable connected to the base unit somewhere that gets speaker audio and can be set by the volume controller and then make a MP3 file with conversations from Broadcastify and play in a loop with a suitable app.

/Ubbe

That is the sort of thing I am contemplating, either direct or via Bluetooth.