R-2000
RF-Input Mod
Submitted by Terry


Because I am a ham as a well as a SWLer, I have always worried about cross connecting my receivers with my transceivers, which would be a bad thing.  In an attempt to prevent this, I decided to use SO/PL259 connectors on my transceivers and BNC on my receivers.  This is not perfect because HTs all use the BNC.  I switched the SO259 to a BNC.

I also added a "5-way" binding post to one of the screw holes (originally intended to hold the add-on VHF converter).  I used a 1/2" braid to bond the R2000 to my ground system.

While hunting down sources of noise in my home, I found that one surprising source was leakage through the 50/500/Gnd/Gnd antenna connections.  I cleaned that one up by moving the RF input connector from the terminal strip with the 50/500/Gnd/Gnd and transformer over to the RF input on the main RF board.  The connectors are the same.  I connected the daughter board output cable to its own input to keep the cable out of the way.  This reduced the QRM from my PC to a low enough level so as not to be an issue.

I have included a couple of photographs below to show these changes.

The first photo below shows the BNC connector with the external washer I used to fill in the larger SO259 mounting hole.  I saved the original SO258 in the event I ever need to revert back to stock.  The "5-Way" ground binding post can also just be seen in the upper right-hand corner:

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The second photo below shows the coax RF input cable connected directly to the main receive board:

You can also see above that the internal attenuator switch has been removed.  About 8 years ago the switch went flaky on me, so I removed it.  I added an external 10dB and 20dB attenuator that works fine.
I tried cleaning it at first, but the switch became so touchy that it made the radio unusable.


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