Grundig Yacht Boy 400PE - Tips?
Dr. Harry Johnson
to get. I'm not quite ready to upgrade to a tabletop model, so I
bought a YB400 PE at a pretty good deal of $99.95. How can I optimize
it's use?
Any tips, undocumented features, antenna configuations, etc.
appreciated. I'm located in the Greenville, SC area - suggestions on
picking up stuff from the Middle East would be useful.
Thanks - Harry
yachtboy!
Johnson) wrote:
One word - Long wire antenna.
Ok, maybe 3 words....
--
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"Being diabetic is alot like having an un-invited
guest at a picnic, who keeps pointing out the potato
salad may have gone bad."--W.B. Willis
"Destiny has a strange sense of humor..." K. Honeycutt
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http://www.geocities.com/swl_yb400pe
http://www.geocities.com/swl_yb400pe/psychedelic.htm
http://www.geocities.com/swl_yb400pe/slinkypage.html
Jay Quinn
yours refurbished? Anyway, I setup a long wire for $10, the Radio
Shack 75' special. It does help, and I run it on the power jack, it
helps a tad more over batteries. I'm still impressed withteh YB, it's
going to the office when my Sat 800M shows up! I plan to hear the
armed forces and much more whe it shows up.
On Sun, 06 Apr 2003 15:37:29 GMT, swl_y...@yahoo.com (yachtboy!)
wrote:
Ren Hoek
Check out some YB400 Mods here:
http://members.aol.com/rickw999/
The last one - YB Mute Mod Variation - is VERY nice! With this mod in place,
you can get a much better feel of what the radio is receiving when
scanning - otherwise, the audio is muted until it finds a signal that's "hot
enough". It can scan right through a faint-but-interesting signal without
this mod.
I don't recall that the others were that dramatic of a change...It's been a
couple of years since I implemented them, though...
-RenHoek
"Dr. Harry Johnson" wrote in message
news:df01e205.03040...@posting.google.com...
Jim Hackett
wrote to the webmaster of the site requesting "clarification", maybe I
mis-read the instructions. Never heard back from him. If YOU have done the
mod successfully, I'd appreciate hearing from you.
--
Remove "beforeflight" to reply.
Grundig S350, 780XLT, DX-392, 398, 440, YB400PE, FR-200,
Ray Jefferson 660ADF, R75, R2, VR-500,
SRIII, Halli S-38, 38e, Nc 60 special, H500, and too many Rat
Shack scanners to mention...
Who has a problem????
"Ren Hoek" <Ren...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:b6s705$8fi9e$1...@ID-179500.news.dfncis.de...
Ren Hoek
Yup - the Mute Mod (Variation) works great. Here's my description of this
mod - see if this clarifies everything:
1. With the cover removed and the battery holder at the bottom, locate the
speaker. About 1" diagonally to the lower left of the speaker, locate a 473
resistor that's just to the right of the 472 resistor (These two R's are
about 3/4" to the right of the screw hole that is directly above the battery
holder door on the cover.)
2. Remove the 473 resitor (the one on the right).
3. Short both of the pads where the 473 resistor was together with one lead
of a 33 Ohm (1/8 watt) resistor. I cut that lead to be about 1/4" long and
soldered it across both pads. You might need to play with the value of this
resistor to set the signal level that will stop the scanning.
4. Locate the 153 resistor that's all the way on the left edge of the board,
in the center, next to the silver screw. One end of this resistor goes to a
transistor, the other end goes to a via through the board. We're interested
in the "via" side of this resistor.
5. Run a 4" (or so) wire from the new 33 Ohm resistor to the "via" end of
the 153 resistor.
That's it! Works great - lasts long time!
-RenHoek
BTW - When I took off the cover to document this mod, I noticed another mod
that I'd done at the same time (a couple of years ago). There's an
additional 390K resistor (1/8W) added across a cap near the Fine Tune
control. I don't remember which of Rick's mods that is at this point...I'll
go through them and see if that needs to be done in order for the Mute Mode
to work.
"Jim Hackett" wrote in message
news:EFlka.13907$4P1.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
Ren Hoek
I need to correct my previous post regarding the "473 resistor":
Actually, there isn't a 473 resistor right next to the 472 resistor - I had
one taped to the inside of my YB400 case - but that came from another mod
(see the bottom of this post)
So, here are the corrected and clarified clarified instructions:
1. With the cover removed and the battery holder at the bottom, locate the
speaker. About 1" diagonally to the lower left of the speaker, locate a 472
resistor that's oriented veritcally (not the horizontal one near the 332
resistor that's only about 1/2" from the speaker)
2. Just to the right of this 472 resistor is a 1/4" x 1/4", squarish trace
with a via in its center that connects two transistors on its lower left and
upper right corners, the 101 resistor on the lower right corner, and (on my
modified radio) a big blob of solder that MIGHT contain a shorted-out chip
resistor. I can't tell without un-soldering this blob, but I think that this
blob is my implementation of Rick's description of "Jump (solder) the top
#472 pad to the pad directly below it." This blob is NOT the vertical 472
id'd in step 1 - its to the right of that one.
3. Connected to this solder blob (shorted out resistor??) is one lead of a
33 Ohm (1/8 watt) resistor. I cut that lead to be about 1/4" long and
soldered it across both pads. You might need to play with the value of this
resistor to set the signal level that will stop the scanning.
4. Locate the 153 resistor that's all the way on the left edge of the
board, in the center, next to the silver screw. One end of this resistor
goes to a transistor, the other end goes to a via through the board. We're
interested in the "via" side of this resistor.
5. Run a 4" (or so) wire from the new 33 Ohm resistor to the "via" end of
the 153 resistor.
Sorry for any additional confusion...
RenHoek
BTW - After a bit of digging, I've found that my "390K mod" is a SSB
Distortion Mod documented here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=o
ff&selm=20000912203110.21527.00000007%40ng-co1.aol.com
It's not needed for the Mute Mode to work.