Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

The AN/PSR-1A showed up yesterday. Major pain in the ass. It seems that military batteries , when this thing was made, were coated with a layer of thick paper. Modern batteries have a rice-paper thin coating of plastic. So when I put the batteries in the battery holder clips the clips cut through the plastic exposing the battery container and thus creating shorts. So, I have to wrap each battery in duct tape. This took about four hours to figure out. So then after getting the power supply end of things figured out, it took another twenty minutes to realize this thing will work best when its grounded. Okay, fine. Ran about thirty feet of wire and stuck one of the probes in the ground…not too enthused with its sensitivity. I think I need to hunt down the TM for this thing , which will be a major pain in the ass, and make sure Im doing everything right.

The TRC3A should be here next week. Hopefully they’ll be a bit easier and more reliable. This is what I get for dinking around with Vietnam-era military tech.