Have any of you ever converted a AA battery holder for a handheld radio into a 9V battery holder? Do any of you remember the QST article from several years ago that explained how to do this? I remember that it involved cutting plastic "walls" out of the unit. However, I can't remember what tools one needs to
do this without creating a big Tim Allen-style mess.
I have an old FBA-15 AA battery holder for my Yaesu FT-50R that I no longer used. (The old one was flaky, and I decided to buy a new one so I wouldn't have to take stopgap measures like scouring metal contacts with sandpaper or adding pieces of aluminum foil to the contacts.) The reasons I would like to convert my old AA battery holder to a 9V battery holder are:
1. Having 9V instead of 6V would allow me to transmit at nearly full power. (The NiCd delivers 9.6V for the full 5 W. The AA battery holder uses 4 AA
batteries to deliver 6W and 2.5W.)
2. I need a way to use up the partly-used 9V batteries I take out of the smoke detector twice per year.
3. I don't like the AA battery holder much, because the battery in one of the four holders is difficult to extract.
Jason Hsu, AG4DG
jason_hsu_802701@@@@yahoo.com
http://www.jasonhsu.com/ham_radio-technical.html