I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.

I'm not interested in the slightest as to whether or not this is
legal, I'm simply looking for educational purposes.
I wanted to get one and then I became curious ... as to how difficult
it would be or how it would be done, what kind of reading I would do
if I wanted to build/modify any radio etc.

Well, Yaesu USED to make a handheld aviation/2M radio, but they don't
anymore. I believe it was a model VXA-xxx (can't remember what number
the x's were). Might look on ebay.

One problem you'll have is aviation band is AM and the 2M ham stuff is
generally FM, so you'd need to build an FM detector. Not sure if you
could "hack" the microprocessor to tune up to the 2M band...

Scott


wrote:
I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.

I'm not interested in the slightest as to whether or not this is
legal, I'm simply looking for educational purposes.
I wanted to get one and then I became curious ... as to how difficult
it would be or how it would be done, what kind of reading I would do
if I wanted to build/modify any radio etc.

--
Scott
http://corbenflyer.tripod.com/
Gotta Fly or Gonna Die
Building RV-4 (Super Slow Build Version)

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:10:01 -0800 (PST), wrote:

I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.

I'm not interested in the slightest as to whether or not this is
legal, I'm simply looking for educational purposes.
I wanted to get one and then I became curious ... as to how difficult
it would be or how it would be done, what kind of reading I would do
if I wanted to build/modify any radio etc.

As I understand it, aviation radios use frequency modulation.
If you are interested in the vhf or uhf amateur transmissions,
then you can build a simple converter in which the portions of
the bands you are interested can be converted to be presented
in the aviation bands.

Your best bets for dealing with other modulation modes such as cw and
ssb is to either buy an older transceiver or shortwave receiver with
beat frequency oscillator (or ssb reception). Alternatively you can
get a receiver kit or build a simple regenerative receiver.

In both cases, an investment in the ARRL's Amateur Radio Handbook
is advisable. An edition after about 1990 (they are done yearly)
would be appropriate.
73,
Ed, N5EI

"Edward Feustel" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:10:01 -0800 (PST), wrote:

I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.

I'm not interested in the slightest as to whether or not this is
legal, I'm simply looking for educational purposes.
I wanted to get one and then I became curious ... as to how difficult
it would be or how it would be done, what kind of reading I would do
if I wanted to build/modify any radio etc.

As I understand it, aviation radios use frequency modulation.
If you are interested in the vhf or uhf amateur transmissions,
then you can build a simple converter in which the portions of
the bands you are interested can be converted to be presented
in the aviation bands.

Your best bets for dealing with other modulation modes such as cw and
ssb is to either buy an older transceiver or shortwave receiver with
beat frequency oscillator (or ssb reception). Alternatively you can
get a receiver kit or build a simple regenerative receiver.

In both cases, an investment in the ARRL's Amateur Radio Handbook
is advisable. An edition after about 1990 (they are done yearly)
would be appropriate.
73,
Ed, N5EI

Aviation uses "AM" - Amplitude Modulation

Aviation band is AM

Scott
N0EDV

Edward Feustel wrote:
On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:10:01 -0800 (PST), wrote:


I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.

I'm not interested in the slightest as to whether or not this is
legal, I'm simply looking for educational purposes.
I wanted to get one and then I became curious ... as to how difficult
it would be or how it would be done, what kind of reading I would do
if I wanted to build/modify any radio etc.


As I understand it, aviation radios use frequency modulation.
If you are interested in the vhf or uhf amateur transmissions,
then you can build a simple converter in which the portions of
the bands you are interested can be converted to be presented
in the aviation bands.

Your best bets for dealing with other modulation modes such as cw and
ssb is to either buy an older transceiver or shortwave receiver with
beat frequency oscillator (or ssb reception). Alternatively you can
get a receiver kit or build a simple regenerative receiver.

In both cases, an investment in the ARRL's Amateur Radio Handbook
is advisable. An edition after about 1990 (they are done yearly)
would be appropriate.
73,
Ed, N5EI

--
Scott
http://corbenflyer.tripod.com/
Gotta Fly or Gonna Die
Building RV-4 (Super Slow Build Version)

On Jan 23, 11:10*pm, wrote:
I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.

I'm not interested in the slightest as to whether or not this is
legal, I'm simply looking for educational purposes.
I wanted to get one and then I became curious ... as to how difficult
it would be or how it would be done, what kind of reading I would do
if I wanted to build/modify any radio etc.

Aviation radios are 117-138 MHz AM modulation. You can either cut some
diodes in the PLL to move them to 2M (144 MHz) or put in new crystals
to move them to 2M. But... there isn't much AM activity on 2M (no
insult intended for the AM diehards, I appreciate their efforts) it's
almost all FM and you won't be happy. AM demodulators kinda sorta will
demodulate some FM signals legibly but you won't have the fine-tuning
controls you'd need to do a good job.

All the HF bands will use predominately CW or SSB or other digital
modes that are not demodulated well by an AM receiver. While there is
some AM activity there too, your aviation receiver's front end would
never let you receive on the HF bands.

Tim N3QE

On Jan 23, 8:10 pm, wrote:
I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.

I'm not interested in the slightest as to whether or not this is
legal, I'm simply looking for educational purposes.
I wanted to get one and then I became curious ... as to how difficult
it would be or how it would be done, what kind of reading I would do
if I wanted to build/modify any radio etc.

The quick way is to build a converter to translate the 144-148 MHz
signals to the aircraft band.

Paul, KD7HB

wrote:
On Jan 23, 8:10 pm, wrote:

I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.

I'm not interested in the slightest as to whether or not this is
legal, I'm simply looking for educational purposes.
I wanted to get one and then I became curious ... as to how difficult
it would be or how it would be done, what kind of reading I would do
if I wanted to build/modify any radio etc.


The quick way is to build a converter to translate the 144-148 MHz
signals to the aircraft band.

Paul, KD7HB


You will find that most hams use FM and some hams use SSB and very few
hams use AM.
Your aircraft radio is AM.

Bill K7NOM

wrote in message
...
I'm curious about how I might modify say my Aviation Radio (my hand
held spare I keep in case of lost electric in an aircraft). To pick up
amateur bands as well as the Aviation bands.


You'd be far better off looking at the wideband pocket scanners that are
now on the market. These cover from the broadcast band up into the
UHF regions and are multimode as well.