Home radio

[Tx_Aggie]

When I got my license in college, there was an old king radio in the pilot lounge that had power and a speaker connected to it for an ‘on the ground’ radio for listening to and practicing atc communications. This was before liveatc.net. I swapped a mac1700 radio last year with a new garmin 355 and would like to rig up something similar at my house. Has anyone done this before? Thanks!

[Mooney Dog]

Cant say ive wired an old radio up to listen, but i do have a handheld that ive used for the exact thing sometimes. Cost me about $160 from shortys and i believe they also have an air band scanner home radio as well. 

[EricJ]

If you have the radio and just want to listen, the box just needs 12V (presumably) power and a VHF antenna connected.   You can plug any VHF antenna onto it, from a walkie-talkie, rabbit ears, whatever, and it'll work.   There should be documentation online somewhere that shows which pins on the back are the +12V input and ground, and the antenna connector is usually a BNC.    Adapters to connect just about anything to BNC are pretty easy to find, and VHF antennas with BNC connectors are common as well.

I have a KX170 in my lab that I use for testing, it's not hard to hook them up.

All that said, it's a lot easier to just buy an "air band" radio and be done with it. 

https://www.amazon.com/ASHATA-Multi-Functional-Aircraft-Receiver-Reduction/dp/B07W93HJPN

These things are really useful, too.   It's essentially a broad band tuner (RTL-SDR) with a USB interface.   There are free software apps to connect to them and scan/receive just about anything up to the bottom of L-Band.    It's the same receiver chip used for the tuner in the Stratux.   Stick it near your PC/laptop and tune and listen to air band, FM, watch the ADS-B traffic come in, whatever. 

https://www.amazon.com/NooElec-RTL-SDR-RTL2832U-Software-Packages/dp/B008S7AVTC

 

[Unit74]

I use my ham radio as my home device. I have no need, and it’s illegal to transmit, to aircraft at my home. But I do enjoy listening to the local traffic coming and going. 

[Tx_Aggie]

21 minutes ago, Unit74 said:

I use my ham radio as my home device. I have no need, and it’s illegal to transmit, to aircraft at my home. But I do enjoy listening to the local traffic coming and going. 

What’s a ham radio?

[Ned Gravel]

What is a Ham Radio?

Used to be mostly HF frequencies on what was often called "amateur radio."  Licence used to require a minimum amount of morse code transmission and reception speeds - most folks could key much faster than they could receive.  Usually allowed up to 200 watts for a home station (depending on jurisdiction).  Today frequencies go far above HF into VHF, and UHF.

Typical station looks like this (from https://www.dummies.com/programming/ham-radio/ham-radio-for-dummies-cheat-sheet/) but it does not show the work for raising and hooking up appropriate antennae or their terminations.  I have friends that still have 80' towers outside their houses, with droopy dipoles, sloping V's and others.

I was in the Signal Corps so I got close to some civ installations - but we did mostly HF for long range, VHF for military tactical, UHF for line-of-sight/microwave/satcom, and SHF for satcom installations.

[Igor_U]

It’s the first thing I did when got into my hangar.  I have bought a Genave radio on ebay with built in speaker intended for panel installation. It’s powered by AC/DC adapter and always on when I am in the hangar   

[0TreeLemur]

Used scanners with aviation frequency band are inexpensive on the interwebs.  I have one at home and one in the hangar.  Lets you monitor more than one freq. at a time.

[carusoam]

In the 70s…

Long before the internet, and ring video door bells…

You could see many houses with a CB radio powered by a 12V power supply connected to a car CB radio…

Mom’s and retired people would talk and discuss the local issues… like what the kids were getting packed for lunch… 

 

All the parts for an aviation radio home install would have come from a local place called RadioShack….

The wiring drawings are probably easy to find for an older radio…

 

Another store from the same period…. Was called U-Doit… where you build everything including a Ham receiver… many kids studied to get their Ham licenses… including the dreaded Morse code.

With a good Ham radio… you can be heard over great distances… at the proper time of day and weather conditions….

Amazing technology of the day…

Fuzzy PP memories at best…

Best regards,

-a-

[Tx_Aggie]

On 8/6/2021 at 8:01 PM, EricJ said:

If you have the radio and just want to listen, the box just needs 12V (presumably) power and a VHF antenna connected.   You can plug any VHF antenna onto it, from a walkie-talkie, rabbit ears, whatever, and it'll work.   There should be documentation online somewhere that shows which pins on the back are the +12V input and ground, and the antenna connector is usually a BNC.    Adapters to connect just about anything to BNC are pretty easy to find, and VHF antennas with BNC connectors are common as well.

I have a KX170 in my lab that I use for testing, it's not hard to hook them up.

Thanks for this. I’m picking this project back up, admittedly totally green. I’m assuming I’d connect the antenna to the “comm” knob… it looks like a cable has been welded to it which now has about and inch lead that is cut. And then further I’m guessing once I find the pin combination I’ll need to remove all the ones shown here that have been cut? Lol trying my best to be technical without knowing any electronic technical words. My last real electrical deep dive was a sophomore electrical engineering circuits class about a decade ago! So not completely starting from nothing but almost. 

[EricJ]

1 hour ago, Tx_Aggie said:

The coax connector may be removable from the cage, but they're difficult to find and replace.    It's probably easier and more convenient to splice a new piece of coax to the stub that is there.   Edit:  Or easier still, just put a BNC connector on the stub and then you can connect whatever you want to it.  

It is not necessary to remove any of the unused wires from the connector unless they're causing a short to something and causing trouble.   This is usually unlikely and if it does happen is usually fixable by snipping it a bit more or just moving it.   If you want it to look a little prettier it is not too difficult to remove the unused contacts from the connector.   I don't usually don't bother with it unless there's a short or something.   You will need to either repin or splice to the stubs for the stuff you need, like power and ground and the speaker output.

 

Edited January 2, 2022 by EricJ