Like most people these days, I strive hard to live by the three "R"s. Reduce,  Reuse, and Recycle. Under the "Reuse" category, I decided to give this old Micronta Model 22-027,  8 Range VOM (Volt-Ohm-Meter) a new lease on life.

Appearance wise, my Micronta 8 Range VOM was in pretty good shape.

Uh-oh, someone (me) left an Alkaline battery in the Micronta VOM and it corroded the negative contact. I am not sure why Micronta choose to use a red wire to connect to the negative contact.

I decided that a chrome plated brass hasp from a wooden craft box would make a good replacement for the negative battery contact.

I cut the metal hasp, using wire cutters, to just a hair bigger than the channel cut into the Micronta VOMs plastic battery tray so as to make sure it was a firm fit. I then used the blade of a screwdriver to press fit it into the channel in the battery tray. I then soldered the red (negative) wire to the new battery contact.

The meter needle did not point to 0 on the DC Volts scale when no voltage was applied, so I "zeroed" the meter with the adjustment screw on the center of the Micronta VOM.  

I also was unable to properly Zero the Ohmmeter function of the Micronta VOM using the Zero Ohms Adjustment thumbwheel on the front of the meter. Adjusting the trimmer potentiometer inside the meter allowed me to adjust the Zero Ohms Adjustment range so as to allow proper Ohmmeter calibration.

My repurposed Micronta VOM was going to me used exclusively to monitor Voltages and to troubleshoot issues with my home brew vacuum tube regenerative radios. As such, I swapped out the test probes with small alligator clips from old alligator leads so that the Micronta VOM leads could be securely connected to component leads and Fahnestock clips in my home brew radios.

Here are the finished Micronta VOM test leads with repurposed alligator clips.

The repurposed alligator clips on my Micronta test leads where sticking in the open position as the spring could not overcome the corrosion at the joints. A drop of Labelle 107 Model Train oil at at the alligator clip joints allowed then to open and close smoothly. 

My repurposed Micronta VOM put into action troubleshooting a newly built Regenerative Radio I just built!

Upon reading the glowing reviews of the BaoFeng UV-5RA Handheld FM Transceiver, I decided to go ahead with the purchase. It was a gamble as I have never purchased any other Amateur Radio equipment that was manufactured from this Chinese company and was worried about the quality. As recommended in the reviews, I also purchased the USB programming cable that will allow me to program this transceiver using my computer. I figured what can I loose. I had a $15 credit on Amazon for taking a survey so, out of pocket, the radio with USB programming cable would only set me back a little over $20 dollars!

The BaoFeng UV-5RA boasts some pretty impressive specs for its price! It covers receive frequencies of 65-108Mhz, so you can listen to regular FM Radio stations. It is a dual band transceiver covering the 2M (136-174Mhz) and 70cm (400-480Mhz) bands for both transmit and receive. This transceiver has the ability to transmit and receive on the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS) , General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS), and Family Radio Service (FRS) bands.
RF Power is 4 Watts for UHF/VHF in high power mode and 1 Watt RF Power for UHF/VHF in low power mode. The UV-5RA supports both simplex and semi-duplex modes of operation. You can set PL tones to trigger repeaters or use CTCSS or DCS Tone Squelch. In addition, it has 128 memory channels. Audio output is 1 Watt. It even has a built in flashlight!

The user manual that comes with the Baofeng UV-5R leaves much to be desired.It is hard to understand how to program the radio from the keypad. The software that comes with the transceiver to allow programming via USB cable from a computer is just as confusing as programming from the keypad! The transceiver's controls were a little hard for me to decipher. For example, pressing the MONI (Monitor) button in Channel mode for a short duration turns on the built-in flashlight. You have to hold down the MONI button to monitor channels!

A pleasant female voice announces when you change settings, assisting in sight free operation. The LCD screen provides a lot of information in a small space. The LCD display back light changes color during different modes of operation. There is no other handheld on the market that boosts the impressive specs of the Baofeng UV-5RA at its price point!
There is a major cult following of amateur radio enthusiasts around the Baofeng UV-5RA FM Transceiver and other Baofeng radio products!
The open-source community has developed CHIRP, a free tool that allows you to easily program your Baofeng UV-5RA via USB cable from your computer. It also allow you to clone channel settings from one UV-5RA and upload to another. In addition, to can save your UV-5RA channel settings to a computer file.
There is also a web site dedicated to the UV-5RA that offers enhanced user manuals with corrections and annotations.
I have also read that it is easily to configure the Baofeng UV-5RA as a Police and Fire scanner, although, I have not investigated this set.
There are many YouTube videos covering from basic operation to cool modifications that can be done to this little transceiver. There are also more sophisticated topics on YouTube like how to use a pair of UV-5RA's to create a make-shift repeater!

You will need this USB cable to program the UV-5RA using the CHIRP application.

This site contains Baofeng UV-5RA manuals corrected, enhanced, annotated, for your reading pleasure!

Web page to down load CHIRP, a great tool that makes programming the BaoFeng UV-5RA easy!

The Baofeng UV-5VA is a great handheld dual-band FM Transceiver. You get a lot of features at a price that other manufacturers cannot match!

Here is my latest acquisition, a Heathkit HW-29A, also know as the "Sixer" or Bentor Harbor Lunchbox" for its lunchbox like physical characteristics and Benton being the home base of the Heathkit corporation. 

The HW-29A was a Heathkit product of the early 1960's and sold as a kit.  It had a new price in 1961 of just $44.95!

The HW-29A was an Amateur Radio VHF Transceiver covering the 50-54MHz or 6m band in AM mode. The transmitter portion was crystal controlled, using a 8MHz crystal and frequency multiplier to achieve the proper carrier frequencies. It boasted 2.5 Watt RF Output so one could classify this as a QRP transceiver of its time.

The receiver section of the HW-29A used an regenerative detector circuit to achieve 1uV sensitivity.

Power for the HW-29A could be derived from 120 VAC line voltage or, for mobile use, from an external 260Volt DC "B+ supply" and 6 or 12 volts DC to power the tube's filaments.

Many of the WH-29As were "field modified" to allow for easier operation. The most common modifications where the relocation of the crystal and RF final plate control to the front panel so that you didn't have to crack open the case to make these adjustments. In addition, many ham radio enthusiasts replaced RCA style antenna jack with a SO-239 connector which ensured a positive connection to the antenna.

The HW-29A had two siblings, the HW-30 "Twoer" and the HW-19 "Tener" which had similar "lunchbox" design and covered the 2m and 10m bands respectively.