"Bill Swingle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >It looks like the Hobbico antenna utilizes a stereo plug (2 conductors + >grd) While Mike's uses a mono plug (1 conductor + grd).
Inside the frequency checker there are two boards. One is a large LED dot matrix display that includes the antenna jack on one side. The other is the smaller rf board, which leaves enough room for the batteries to fit inside the case. Here's a picture: http://www.vvsss.com/freq_checker/both_boards.jpg The rf board has a single seven-inch antenna wire coming out of it that wraps around the inside of the case and ends at the antenna jack on the dot matrix board. With no external antenna plugged in, this seven-inch wire alone acts as the antenna. Now look at this picture: http://www.vvsss.com/freq_checker/matrix_back.jpg This is the back of the dot matrix board, which has a PIC microcontroller just above the antenna jack. You can also see the battery connectors. Notice that the end of the antenna wire connects only to the ground or shield terminal of the antenna connector, which appears to be a stereo jack. I was unable to find any connection of the tip and center terminals of the jack to any on the circuitry on the dot matrix board, nor did I expect to find any. Those terminals are merely soldered to an isolated portion of the board to help secure the jack in place. The bottom line is that it doesn't make a bit of difference whether you use a mono or stereo plug for your antenna because only the shield (ground) terminal connects to anything inside the frequency checker. Whatever you plug into the ground connection of that jack will act as an extension of the existing seven-inch antenna wire. Here's a cute animated GIF I made to show how fast the frequency checker scans: http://www.vvsss.com/freq_checker/freq_checker.gif Mike -- _____ \__________________|__________________/ (O) RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format