Tweet
Back in '92 or '93, somewhere in that time frame I received a SONY Air-8 as a Christmas gift. This was shortly after getting my Private Certificate. I thought this radio was the coolest thing outside of an ICOM A-21.
Somewhere around the late '90's it stopped receiving. After opening it up I found that the BNC antenna jack was bad. I bought another from RS and then the radio sat in pieces until today.
I stopped working on it because there was also a cap that was loose in the case and at first I couldn't figure out where that went. (It was on the ground side of the BNC jack for noise suppresion.) The other reason it sat was because the bottom half of the BNC jack was fatter than the original and the circuit board was slightly in the way. The connector mount also had the flat of the connector hole rotated in the wrong orientation for the flat on the jack.
I fixed that with my Dremel and opened it up just a bit so the BNC jack would sit higher in the mount to avoid the circuit board. I soldered the cap to the ground tab on the jack and soldered the other end to the chassis.
It's working like new again, and looks pretty good for a 30 year old radio. I used to drag this brick of a radio everywhere. It was in my flight bag, went to Lambert airport in TWA's heyday when they used to do simultaneous approaches all the time, every day. I used to take it flying to monitor local airspace if I wasn't tuned to them on the aircraft radio.
This old set certainly brings back a lot of memories. I'm glad I fixed it. It's a keeper.
Somewhere around the late '90's it stopped receiving. After opening it up I found that the BNC antenna jack was bad. I bought another from RS and then the radio sat in pieces until today.
I stopped working on it because there was also a cap that was loose in the case and at first I couldn't figure out where that went. (It was on the ground side of the BNC jack for noise suppresion.) The other reason it sat was because the bottom half of the BNC jack was fatter than the original and the circuit board was slightly in the way. The connector mount also had the flat of the connector hole rotated in the wrong orientation for the flat on the jack.
I fixed that with my Dremel and opened it up just a bit so the BNC jack would sit higher in the mount to avoid the circuit board. I soldered the cap to the ground tab on the jack and soldered the other end to the chassis.
It's working like new again, and looks pretty good for a 30 year old radio. I used to drag this brick of a radio everywhere. It was in my flight bag, went to Lambert airport in TWA's heyday when they used to do simultaneous approaches all the time, every day. I used to take it flying to monitor local airspace if I wasn't tuned to them on the aircraft radio.
This old set certainly brings back a lot of memories. I'm glad I fixed it. It's a keeper.
Comment