From: kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) Newsgroups: rec.radio.shortwave Subject: anti-chuffing mod for DX-380/ATS-808 Rules: you may copy this posting, and give it away for free. You may NOT sell copies of it. You may NOT include this posting in any publication for which any price is charged. You may NOT store this message on a computer bulletin board that charges users any fees. This message may be given away freely, but NOT sold. This message is Copyright (C) 1992 by Kenneth J. Hendrickson. I bought a Service Manual from Sangean to do this mod. You may or may not have to buy one to figure out which parts to remove. The Service Manual was very cheap, being only a xerox copy of the real thing. It was very difficult to tell the difference between circuit board tracings and components, because it wasn't printed in two colours as standard service manuals are. Sangean receives an F. I may never buy another Sangean radio because of this poor manual. I can't berate this service manual enough. It wasn't worth the $12 I paid for it. Xerox costs would only have been $4 at the relatively expensive cost of $.10/page. anti-Chuffing mod: remove chip resistors R109 and R110 on the back side of the main board. (You could also remove Q27 & Q28, but the resistors were far easier to get at.) ascii artwork: ^ | O O****O speaker ** * **R110****O ** * audio amplifier section ***R109** ** * * * O O O * ***O The *'s are copper traces. The O's are connections to the other side of the board. The section of the circuitry shown is on the back side of the main board, at the bottom, and at the left side of the speaker, about 2/3 of the way from the left side of the radio, as the speaker faces downward. It is not necessary to remove the control board to perform this mod. After performing the mod, it became obvious why Sangean used up circuit board space, two transistors, and several biasing and bypassing components, building this "feature" into the radio. When switching between bands, and when turning the radio on and off, there is a short sharp squeal as the VCO settles to the right frequency. It is annoying, but it is offset by being able to tune up and down the SW bands as slowly or quickly as desired, while listening to what is going on. I really like the radio after the modification. Suggestion to Sangean (just in case you're reading this): since the radio is computer controlled, software should be written for the controller that uses the audio muting circuitry during power-up, power-down, band changing, and frequency changing by direct frequency entry or memory selection. The muting should *not* be used while tuning with the tuning knob, tuning buttons, or while scanning. (It's really pleasant to be able to hear what's happening during scanning as well as manual tuning.) Since you really do need the audio muting feature (since the average person would never put up with that VCO settling squeal), and since it is already in the radio, and since it would cost basically nothing to include extra software to mute during all tuning *except* manual tuning and scanning, let's see this in the next model. ======================================================================== Note: I haven't tried or verified this, proceed at your own risk. WA2ISE /EX