I have three of these little radios, a couple 128mb ones and a 32mb one,
at work recording Imus and Rush for the week, so a total of 35 hours or
so, what with duplication of Imus.

They're pretty insensitive on AM; a MW loop is required even for
some stations you'd think would be locals.

But they turn on and off at the right times, and don't depend on
the power being on, so are nice backups to live listening.

One trouble is I have to insert 6 charged AAA NiMH's each morning,
so I started thinking, maybe I can build a D cell power pack.

Unfortunately the wall wart power goes off when the power goes off
and if it's plugged into the RMY, the thing goes not go to internal
batteries instead.

So I put a jones plug on each of three wall wart dc lines, and
a jones plug on two 2-D-cell holders (2 of them on one and one on the
other) and just plug the 3 radios into the D-cell packs as if they
were wall warts. I have a 1amp fuse in each at the battery, since
NiMH are fully capable of starting a nifty fire if something shorts out.

The 7500maH D cells run the two RMY's okay for the week (4h + 3h
per day), which makes sense since the 750maH AAA's were enough for about
4.5h.

One strange thing, and point of this post, is that the battery indicator
starts out one bar down, and pretty quickly goes to all but one bar off,
on the external power plug; whereas the NiMH AAA's start full and more
or less stay full for the same relative rundown. The battery indicator
seems to operate differently for the two sources. However, the thing
runs as if the power were fine. Maybe there's a limiting resistor
or something on the external plug.

So anyway I only have to put in 4 batteries once a week now, a vast
improvement.

If I need to use a wall wart, I can just plug into its jones plug
instead of the D-cell pack's.

The particular coaxial dc plug is unobtainable other than by
snipping off a wall wart 2.75mm OD, 0.65mm ID, very very tiny.
A needle doesn't insert very far (but far enough to check polarity).
Hence the snippage.
--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

Maybe it's RadioYourWay. whatever.
--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.