http://www.instructables.com/id/Transistor-Radio-Hack/
Listen to aircraft traffic inexpensively.
Might be used to build an ELT scanner.
Or you can just buy an old Jetstream aircraft radio on flea-bay.
A, it's not a scanner, just a tunable receiver, and B, it's receiving an AM signal on an FM receiver, which is horribly inefficient. The available range and sensitivity will be very low. As was suggested above, get an olde Jetstream. I have two, and they work very well for body shadowing.
Quote from: Frenchie on August 02, 2008, 11:15:43 PM
Or you can just buy an old Jetstream aircraft radio on flea-bay.
Yeah, but that takes all the fun out of it. Its supposed to be a fun science project. Could be something to do with the cadets - teaches them about radio bands as well as how a radio works to aide in their understanding of our comm equipment.
I would think they would learn considerably more by building a radio. There's lots of kits available or you can build them from scratch.
Quote from: Frenchie on August 03, 2008, 02:59:23 PM
I would think they would learn considerably more by building a radio. There's lots of kits available or you can build them from scratch.
This I've done before, in high school...it is worth a try and really aquaints one with the field of basic electronics.
This place has several very nice kits:
http://www.class-a-kits.com/communications.html (http://www.class-a-kits.com/communications.html)
For $45 you can get a kit that receives ATC frequencies, and it even has squelch and AGC.
For the same price you can get one that picks up the 2 meter FM band which should work for CAP radios.
There's also this:
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=ABM1
$89.95 kit - listens to the entire band at once, it's passive.
The bad? It listens to ATIS too. The closest/strongest is the loudest.
OTOH, nulling ATIS is pretty easy. A BDU pocket and facing away from the tower works wonders. I use a speaker instead of the crappy earbuds. It's got us in DFing too. With a small piece of metal blocking it, to where just a small wire is exposed you can find 'leaks' from faint ELT's in hangars where it 'leaks' out door cracks. Another tool in helping to determine which of the three 'T' hangars you narrowed it down to at 2AM really contains the offending transmitter.
Or for $44.95 you can build a nice receiver:
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=AR1C
The enclosure is even included here.
$199.95 gets you a synthesized model- with scanner.
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=AR2
..and for a twist:
Building your own airport, or wanna help out one?
Runway light controller: Use it in combination with the $44.95 receiver and you can control the lights from your radio.
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=AR2L
All of the above are on this list:
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/hk/default.asp?page=tr