Well, that is interesting.  I could tell you lots of stories how I nearly
atarted a fire with an old cordless phone in the wrong voltage adapter.  I
plugged in something that was too high o voltage for it, and I ended up
melting the plastic.  I'll never forget the cussing I got that day from my
grandfather, but this was just a spare handset that he found and we just
would play around with it, but we had to charge the batteries in a
separate charger.  This meant taking them out of the handset and charging
them that way.  It was one of the first Uniden phones and it opperated
above the AM band.  We could not only listen to the neighbor's
conversations, but sometimes when conditions permitted I could make calls
from theirline.
        I think that the first thing I took a part and really started to
dable around with was a baby monitor.  It was a light sound monitor from
Fisher Price, and the lights flash when you have the volume down if the
child does start to cry or anything like that.  The receiver has a PC
board, but the transmitter uses crystals for the 49 MHz frequencies.  I
had the monitor a part when I had the receiver on one time, and touching
different parts of the PC board produced different results.  For example I
could control and change the channel to frequencies it couldn't tune, but
within a few KHz of what it was tuned to.  I didn't change thecrystals at
all or anything, but I took it back to the store, and got my $30 back for
it.  I'm glad though I didn't tell them it hadbeen taken a part though,
but I am thinking about buying another monitor just like it, and maybe
playing around and seeing what I can do with it.  I have heard that some
baby monitorwsmake good 6-meter rige.  Are some monitors better then
others for this then?





On Sun, 4 Nov 2001, Anne & John wrote:

> Hello Jeffrey and listers.  Sorry I have taken so long to post this.  We
> have been busy this weekend.
>
> When I have wires to connect to a power supply, I too tie a knot in the hot
> wire and put a braille notation on the plus post to be sure I don't make a
> mistake.  I don't work on wiring but electrical tape to distinguish colors
> works too.  To answer your question Jeffrey, Casey did not have a job in
> electronics but dabbled with stuff at home.  He kept wires separated by
> tying bread ties on them.  If they were tiny, then he used the tape.  I
> always wondered if the metal in the ties would cause a problem.  I'll never
> forget the day that Casey's brother gave him an old tube A M radio to play
> with.  Casey plugged it in and turned it on.  It hummed loudly then filled
> the room with smoke but the thing played on!  I think that one hit the
> trash!
>
> Anne, K1STM
>