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Q: I get an error when I start Wintone that contains "MSYSERR[32]"
A: When Wintone starts, it attempts to initialize the default sound device. If
this device has already been allocated by another application, you will recieve this
error or one similar. If you do, you will want to right click on the speaker
icon in the system tray, and select "Adjust Audio Properties". Here you can
define the default recording and playback devices. In the Recording Devices
box, choose another selection from the drop down box.
Q: I get an error that says "Cannot Locate any Toneset DLL's - Wintone Exiting!"
A: This is a known problem in Wintone 2.02 - It will occur if you play a wave
file from a different directory than your wintone directory. When the wave file is
played, wintone changes the "Current Directory" to the one where the wave file
is located. Then, when you try to change tonesets, it scans the current
directory for ant toneset DLL', and fails. The solution is to either play wave
files from the Wintone directory only, or to change directories back to the
wintone directory before you switch
First, I do a search and lockout all the birdies. Next, I set it to search and store to a bank that already has the first 24 channels filled leaving only 1 channel available for storing.
When it finds an active channel that is not already programmed in the radio it will store the frequency in the 25th channel and unmute the audio and display that the bank is full on the screen.
This enables you to hear what it has found and gives you plenty of time to get to the radio and decide if you want to listen to it, send it to a bank or lock it out. It is important to remember that it will skip any frequency that is already stored in the radio.
Radio Shack item #42-263, $9.99, is a small belt holster intended for compact FRS radios. It's got a front pocket made of a black, springy, neoprene-like fabric. The back of the holster is a stiffer, lightly-padded nylon equipped with a wide fabric belt loop secured at the bottom with a metal snap. The radio is held in the holster by an elastic loop that fits around the antenna.
It's a clever design, and the R2 fits almost perfectly with the elastic loop at exactly the right height for the antenna. The speaker is covered, but as far as I can tell the audio is not muffled at all. I padded out the bottom of my holster with a little bit of foam rubber packing materal; it gives a little extra protection and raises the R2's controls just above the edge of the holster's pocket for easier access.
A holster like this doesn't offer any protection for the LCD or the buttons but it's certainly better than nothing. And I find it more comforable than the R2's stock belt clip. I prefer the black model, but they also sell the same item in camouflage green. They also have a nearly identical holster (#42-262) designed to attach the handlebars of a bike that might be adaptable for other mobile situations.
As its quite common now for fire departments to respond on calls with EMS, I thought it may be handy to program the duplex feature on each frequency with the other agencies frequency. For example, fire is dispatched on 153.890 so in that memory channel, duplex + offset 1.075 = 154.965 which is the EMS frequency. Same for the memory channel that the EMS frequency is in but with a duplex - setting. This allows a quick switch back and forth during a response, no matter which one the scan stops on first. Sort of a manual "dual watch".
This could also be handy for a PD with a dispatch frequency and a car-car frequency.
Hmpf. Well, I wanted to be able to recharge the thing in the car, or run it off my 12 volt Photovoltaic array/battery storage system that I have at home for all my scanners, ham gear and SWL receivers. The manual itself says that it cannot do a fast charge unless given more than 9 volts.
The obvious solution was to use a voltage regulator. Rather than push my luck with the tolerances of a 12 volt regulator, I used a 10 volt regulator -- the 7810 -- and mounted it inside a cigarette lighter plug, with an appropriate power cord to connect to the Opto.
The 78xx regulators (the last two digits are the regulated output voltage) are dirt-cheap, easy to use, rugged, and are capable of protecting themselves from abuse. Any electronics house in your city will likely have the 7810, or you can order it through one of the mail-order houses or even Radio Shack. You want the 1 amp version, which is the most common one -- unless you ask for a different one or are dealing with someone unscrupulous, that's the one you'll get.
The regulator has three leads: From left to right, they are +DC in, -ground, +Regulated DC out. From Radio Shack or other sources, you can get a power cord to modify or the plugs to build your own -- I did the latter. The Opto power plug is 2.1 mm i.d. so make sure that's the one you get. It's very common. Radio Shack sells complete cables like this, with disassemblable (!) cigarette lighter plugs; there appears to be enough room to wire in the regulator.
Wiring is simple: Inside the cigarette lighter, the center pin is connected to +DC in, the wire that used to be there (which probably has a ridge or a white stripe on it) is connected to +Regulated DC out, and the ground wire is fastened to the other wire.
(Apologies for the poor picture quality. Please note that the resistor visible is for a pilot LED on that case and not part of the circuit.) The regulator in this picture is barely visible below the knot in the wire.
If you choose to build this, check, recheck, and check again! The 2.5 mm plug will have 10 volts on it with positive being the center.
In charging, the plug will feel a little warm. This particular regulator often has a heat sink fastened to it, but there's not a good way to do that in this design. Since the 78xx series regulators have built in overtemp protection, I'm not worried and haven't seen it shut down on me.
Now I can run my Opto products (the whole line) from inside my car for as long as I want! Hopefully you can use this as well.
I don't have either a drill press or taps, so I used a length of 1/4 inch brass tube (sold in a hardware store plumbing blister pack as "fill tube") with a 6-32 brass nut soldered on each end. To cut cost, I also switched to a PL-259 panel-mount female connector that has 4 mounting holes on a square plate.
On the top end, thread the nut onto a stainless 6-32 screw long enough to fit in the tube to center the nut, solder the nut in place, remove excess flux, remove the stainless screw, and file the nut points to the round profile of the tube.
At the bottom end, do the same with a 1 inch brass screw that you have removed the head from. Thread the brass nut halfway onto the brass screw. Solder the screw to the nut when you solder the nut to the tube. File the protruding screw to fit inside the connector's solder cup, and then solder to the connector. Don't worry much about precisely centering the filed screw - it won't affect the impedance enough to measure.
I had to adjust the lengths of the two brass tubes very slightly to compensate for the thicknesses of the nuts, but "trial fitting" was needed for the plastic washers anyway.
I have not done this yet, but I am planning to also solder brass screws down through the 4 connector flange mounting holes. I want to thread the mating coax connector up through a 10-foot length of PVC pipe and use a hose clamp on the 4 screws to hold the antenna securely in place.
When scanning a bank that has only a few channels used, there is a bit of a pause where the 8200 looks for more channels to scan before it wraps around to the beginning again. That pause can be minimized by adjusting the size of the bank. I was scanning a service with only 18 frequencies, and the pause at the end was noticeable. By changing the bank to size 20, the pause all but went away.
I was listening to L.A. scanner online and they called out an incident and I wondered "Where is that?" So I entered the street, and state, picked the block from a list and there I was hovering over the neighborhood in one of those black stealth helicopters;-) I wish.
I live in a suburban area with local network, Fox and PBS television transmitters as well as a few dozen AM and FM radio stations. The Uniden Bearcat BC895XLT seemed selective and sensitive enough to dispense with the telescoping antenna provided and try something different. Besides, the location I was forced to chose for the scanner, squeezing it in between shelves holding lines of tuners, speakers, power supplies, meters and a number of UHF/VHF/HF transceivers, left no room for the telescoping antenna provided by Uniden.
The solution was a simple J-pole constructed of 48 inches of inexpensive Radio Shack 300 ohm television twin lead and a short piece of coaxial feed line. I used a discarded 3 foot piece of 75 ohm RG-59 foam cable TV coaxial feed line. The piece of RG-59 I had was an end piece with an "F" connector on it. I used an "F" to "BNC" adapter to connect the RG-59 to the BC895. Complete instructions for this simple "J-Pole" antenna can be found in numerous ham radio antenna building books as well as on the internet. One such site is Bill and Blair's ScannerNet World Wide Web Site.
I have used this J-Pole pinned vertically to a wall in my "shack" with excellent results. Improvements were noted in signal strength by several LED segments on the 895's meter when receiving weak signals from public safety/EMT pack-sets and distant light aircraft communications with our local ATC tower.
The home brewed J-Pole is not a giant killer when used taped to an interior wall but it is effective, stealthy, and easy to put together. And you get the satisfaction of building something yourself.
This hiss doesn't increase with increased volume, so the solution is simple. Use a Radio Shack in-line earphone volume control, part no. 42-2459, $4.99. By turning the inline volume down, this cuts the background hiss to almost nothing. To compensate, the scanner's volume is turned up...and the AOR8200 has plenty of volume to spare.
The same technique can also be used to make the annoying bleeps on Yupiteru scanners quieter, as the bleep volume is fixed in relation to the received audio output.
Installation of the bracket was very easy, with the total time being about five minutes. No holes to drill, no cutting. All I had to do was pop off the radio face plate and bolt the bracket in with an existing bolt. You can see the result in the accompanying pictures. The result is neat, keeps the radio out of the way, and gets the antenna up higher than sitting the radio on the car seat.
Take a piece of stiff aluminum about 8 inches long by 2 1/2 wide. Bend it in the middle so each leg is 4 inches long. Make the included angle for the bend at 45 degrees. Place velcro on the outside of one of the legs. Place the matching velcro on the back of the 245.
Press the scanner against the velcro on the aluminum. Now the scanner will rest at a conveinient angle to read on your desk top.
I suggest that the velcro on the scanner be in two separate pieces. One on the back of the battery case and the other a little higher on the back of the case; makes it easier to remove the batteries.
One of these hurts me when tuning AM stations in HF. My habit, maybe coming from base HF receivers use, is to keep the squelch fully counter-clockwise (open) and to manually search AM broadcasts sweeping the band using the rotary dial.
The side rotary dial of the AR-8200 is the worst option in the market for this job, I personally find the common top panel rotary dial much more handy, but far more annoying is the continuous "chuff-chuff" coming from the speaker at each step increment.
Well, I've happily noticed that this "chuff-chuff" doesn't happen if I keep the "MONI" button pressed while tuning. Of course I keep both hands busy in this operation, but my tuning is faster and I don't miss weak stations. A toggling operation of the "MONI" button, similar to the IC-R2, would be welcome from AOR...or am I just dreaming...
What I found was the PRO-64 leather case (#20-060) in stock and on clearance for 27 cents! So I bought the last 2 and took a chance that I might be able to modify it to fit.
With a little trimming for the LCD and side controls I got a real leather case and some protection for my AR8200.
Simply cover the window with a strip of the tape being careful not to get finger prints on the sticky side of the tape. I use an Exacto knife to trim around the window, most of them have a groove that the knife will fall into so you don't scratch the radio or the window,(be careful).
The tape holds up for many months I have a couple of radios that have had the tape on them for over a year. If you need to replace the tape simply lift it off and replace.
The durability is amazing and it is more scratch resistant than most plastic screens. The nice thing is that a roll will give you protection for several hundred radios, in fact it may even take care of all of Rich's collection.
Maybe not the best of reception, but perhaps a way to use your handheld on your side and not have the antenna sticking you in your side!
Well! I turns out you can "lock-out" the 800 trunked channels in a bank. Invoking the trunked mode still works fine, it essential ignores the lock-out setting. So, now I can also put many non-trunked frequencies, like the adjacent conventional PD, in this same bank. Since the trunked stuff is locked-out I can include this bank in my scan normally. This works on both the 2066 and 90 and lets me get the most out of my scanner.
The copper wire will be soldered onto the telescopic antenna, and the wire and antenna will be slid into the Motorola end of the BNC adapter to complete the antenna.
Here are the details:
Jim's Upgrading Coax page.
First get a 5 foot hunk of wire (I used 18ga speaker wire) and terminate one end with a large alligator clip (I bought the 4 pack dual color at Radio Shack). Leave the other end cleanly clipped so it doesn't make any electrical connection with anything it may come in contact with. Best results may be obtained if you crimp the unterminated end and hang it on some blinds mostly vertically if possible or even laying on the floor may work if you orient it right.
Clip the alligator around the BNC's knurled part. Voila', you should notice a significant improvement in the level of the signal and also the noise levels should diminish significantly. For frequencies above 100MHz, best results are obtained if you move the clip from the knurled part of the BNC connector to the shaft of the antenna just above the insulator. This of course will work best overall with a metal (non rubber duckie) type of antenna such as any telescopic type.
Seeing as how a brain surgeon must have designed it, why not use a surgical tool to make the job less aggravating. A small pair of curved tip hemostats make the job of plugging in that tight battery connection a whole lot easier.
I've been doing it that way for quite some time now. Just be careful not to clamp down to tight on the plastic connector.
Write Right is intented to protect the Palm Pilot organizer as you write on it with the stylus. It's a wee bit thick but still very usable.
To cut the Write Right to the correct size, I flip the film over while it's still on the backing paper and trace the edge of the window I want to protect with my fingernail. Cut the Write Right to fit and install per the instructions on the box. If you mess up you can peel it off and try again. If you're careful, it's really very forgiving.
Using the Write Right does cut down on the visability of the screen a little. But compared to scratching the screen it's very usable. In each box you get 12 Write Rights pre-cut for a Palm Pilot. I was able to do both an AR8200 and a SC-150 with one piece.
A box of 12 Write Rights sell for 27.99 retail and can be found at any big retailer stocking Palm Pilot accesories. You can also find them at www.conceptkitchen.com.
This hiss doesn't increase with increased volume, so the solution is simple. Use a Radio Shack in-line earphone volume control, part no. 42-2459, $4.99. By turning the inline volume down, this cuts the background hiss to almost nothing. To compensate, the scanner's volume is turned up...and the AOR8200 has plenty of volume to spare.
The CT-17 and the Opto cable come in a good bit cheaper than the AOR interface (CU-8232)and allow you to reaction tune as well as use computer control. I have tested this with Simon Collings PC Manager Software and it works great.
Its unique feature is two articulated arms which can wrap around the scanner body and hold it securely in place. It has two very large adhesive tape pads, and it attaches firmly to the dashboard.
Wal-Mart, among others, sells a pocket 1/4" drive tool kit. It consists of a handle with magnet in the center to hold the bits, and 3 or 4 1/4" screwdriver bits. They cost a couple of dollars. Take an ordinary file, and file down the area around the hole in the handle where the bits go. File so that you have two fingers of metal coming out of the bit hole area. (This is tough to describe, but if you know what the collar on a connector looks like - the small screw-like indentations on opposite sides of the ring - then you should be able to visualize what we're doing here.)
It won't take long, because most of these small tool handles have an aluminum shaft. The handle's bit-hole will fit over the SMA, and if you've made the fingers the right size, the fingers will fit into the slots on the ring and you can tighten or loosen the ring. Only file down enough to make fingers that are less than 1/8" high; you don't need more.
And, if you clean out any burrs that result from filing (which you should do anyway to have plenty of clearance with the connector,) the handle will still work with the bits. BTW, I put mine in a vise first, to keep the handle steady and make the work go faster. I had my modified tool ready to go in about a half hour.
Use an old credit card type plastic card and put a screw through both ends attaching it horizontily to the wooden structure and make sure to leave a little slack in the middle of the card so that you can just slide the scanner on to it and off with ease.
I've used this method of cheaply and neatly attaching scanners to my station.
Best of all, for me, both cases have clear plastic fronts and elastic sides that allow the keypad and - uh, whatever you call the knob that isn't the squelch - to be used easily. (Much more so than with the Welz case - I can't use the keys through those tiny holes). The keypad and the display window are visible. The cases seem a little tight at first, but soon stretch to fit perfectly.
There are also metal tabs with wriststraps attached over the beltclips. The Ericsson one has a little flap at the bottom front that flips up and would protect the face of the radio - the flap has a small pocket that can be used for a cheat sheet or frequencies or what have you.
I found these for about $8.00 each, from one of the vendors that sets up shop in the cafeteria at work. Possibly flea market/hamfest item?
Cut a length of single-conductor stranded wire, such as 18 or 22 gauge hookup wire, to whatever length you want. (more on length in a minute.) Buy the RS BNC and a pack of heat-shrink tubing, like the RS pack with numerous 6" lengths. Cut short, 2" to 3" lengths, and shrink them over one end of your wire, one over another, one at a time, until your wire is similar in diameter to coax. The original wire will stay centered. As it gets thicker, try the fit in the BNC to insure you don't make it too big. Push this shrink-wrapped end into the BNC until the wire connects to the spike. Screw in the set-screw and you've got a wire antenna for your BNC-equipped radio!
Wire length: For SW or HF, cut a long random length, 20 feet or more. I made a 25-footer yesterday; I'm still trying it out, but so far it's working well. For VHF/UHF/800, measure a quarter-, half-, 5/8-, (or whatever) wavelength piece. I also made a 1/4 wave for 146 MHz; works quite well for transmitting and receiving. (For anyone wondering, I have not encountered any impedance problems; my max power out is only 1W anyway.) A small suction cup holds it upright to a car window, or I can let it just droop.
Here's a picture of my QS200 in action.
Formerly available at EEB, try Scanners Unlimited in the US, Durham Radio in Canada and most any dealer in Europe.
Here's pictures of my QS300 stand-alone and supporting an AR8200.
Formerly available at EEB, try Scanners Unlimited in the US, Durham Radio in Canada and most any dealer in Europe.
| Copyright © 2004 by Richard J. Wells |
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