Goofing around with my old Duane mic, I happened to talk to a trucker passing through and had a good QSO on ch 22. The mic I think is a ceramic element (maybe crystal I don't know) and is not a powered mic, but it does work. Well I thought it needed a little kick on my Galaxy 99 and the idea popped into my head to use a small headphone amplifier inline.
The headphone amp I bought a while ago to use with the home stereo and cost about $30. Sony rack system with four 12s and the 5 disk changer from the late 80s. When the kids friends came over, they wanted to play music from their phones. Without blue tooth of any kind, I bought a turn table headphone amp to have for the kids to plug their phones in and with the volume knob on the front, it made it real easy to set the audio level. The kids had a blast taking turns being the DJ. The only rule was no songs with cussing. I like all kinds of music but I did not want my kids walking around the house singing cuss words because it was stuck in their heads.
So I chopped up an old RCA cord and wired it up to some mic jacks. Excellent audio reports, enough to make me think twice about changing the mic element to an electric studio element.
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