Solar Radio

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FAQ about Solar Radio

Making my radio solar powered? Can I take a solar panel and capacitor ( I think it's a capacitor ) off a calculator, and wire them into the positive and negative terminals on my radio? Will this work? no, because a radio has an audio amplifier, it demands a lot more current than an LCD display calculator. however, you can get small solar panels that will easily run a radio. try radio shack or sporting goods stores.

What is the maximum temperature a Radio Shack solar cell can withstand? I just bought 2 solar cells from Radio Shack (Item#276-0124) and was wanting to surface mount the backs to a protoboard I also got from there. I was wondering, what is the maximum temperature that the cells can withstand before the break? I am using a toaster oven as a soldering oven, so I need to know what is the danger zone for the heat setting. Thank you! I have a soldering iron, but I need the cells to be surface mounted to the board, aka why i'm baking them. That is a fascinating idea. I did a little bit of research and it could actually come in quite handy to use a toaster oven as a soldering iron. It's very tedious to solder a lot of components. I found this url which you may have already seen:
http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/200006/oven_art.htm
which discusses how to use the oven as a soldering iron. It has some recommendations on temperature. Your best bet would be to take the part numbers of the radio shack parts and google them and then look at the specs on them to see how much heat they can withstand. I did that and found this page however, it didn't provide all the details:
http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/uc/rsk/Support/ProductManuals/2760124_PM_EN.pdf
You might need a solder that melts at a low temperature. That might be your best bet and then buy some spare solar cells and give it a try. What I would do first is heat the oven up and then try melting a small piece of solder first, or as that one link suggested, getting some of the liquid solder type stuff. If it doesn't damage the components, that might be a neat way to run through soldering multiple items fast.
Can you calibrate your temperature? That might be a good thing to do as well.

Does anyone make a solar powered radio? Looking for companies that make solar powered radios. If those can be produced cheaply and provided in vast numbers ot Afghanistanis, it might put a real crimp in the Taliban's tail. They won't be able to restrict information flow. $17 new from 26 sellers
UPC: 17874002962 A great radio charged by Solar Energy. Excellent for outdoors, camping or in emergency situations. Never be without music, news, sports or weather. 20 minutes of listening after only 1 minute of cranking. 7 hours of listening when fully charged. When fully charged by solar energy you get 35 to 40 hours of listening. Features include: Weather resistant construction AM/FM and WB (weather band) frequencies Powered by the sun or easy hand cranked generator Up to 40 hours of listening on a full charge No batteries required Dimensions: 2.25 x 3 x 3.625 inches Includes retail packaging

Wiring a 12V Solar panel and an external power source (house outlet) together on a switch to power a 50W Radio? Building a case that has 5 Handheld radios with a 50W mobile radio on the top. I have a 12V solar panel. Is it possible to wire the solar panel to the radio and put it on a switch so that you can change from uninterrupted power (house current) to the solar panel to power the radio? Looking for the easiest and cheapest way to do this. You have a battery basically. Probably a deep cycle marine or golf-cart type batter, maybe 100 to 150Ah.
The battery will have enough capacity to power your load for an adequate time, to power the mobile radio, and charge the hand held radios. Depending, you may need an inverter to run the chargers, but good handhelds should have 12V charging options. The radios would take their power from the battery continuously, regardless of AC power, solar power, or lack of either.
The AC supply and solar panel will basically be paralleled.
The AC will be a supply suitable to charge your battery type and power a load. A 10A 13.8V regulated supply will do most likely.
Solar might be 40W of panels (more if needed), and a charge controller.
If it were me, I would add a circuit that would give preference to solar charging of the battery.

Looking for a TWO speaker hand cranked/solar radio? I've looked and so far no luck. I remember a long while ago my aunt had a nice two speaker solar powered radio but I can't find any online. do they still make them or are they all one speaker? I currently have a pink handheld solar powered/hand crank radio/flashlight but that only has one speaker. Thanks. Orpheus, Thank you for the links but I didn't see any solar/hand crank radios with TWO SPEAKERS! Gave you thumbs up anyways for trying to help me! Thanks again! :) I found this sheet for you http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/Multifunction-radio-manufacturers/b/2000000003844/3000000182242/12295.htm
ME!
.

the effects of solar activity on radio propagation? I don't know much about this. It is for a science project and I would like to know how long it takes to have data on this. Radio propagation depends a lot on the wavelength (or frequency) and its interactions with the ionosphere.
See if you can grasp some of this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation
Solar activity interferes (modifies, changes, interacts) with the ionosphere and therefore at times disrupt radio communications. Again see what you can squeeze out of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_activity
Or go here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere
Suddenly these items of Wiki seem a bit technical. Check this out first
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3aurWhQsTw
Good luck.

How do you charge a cell phone on an EZ Crank Solar Flashlight Radio? My Grandpa just got an EZ Crank Solar Flashlight Radio for his birthday and he asked me how to charge a cell phone on it, because in the instructions it says that you can. Is there like an extension cord thing that he needs to buy? Thank you so much for your help, my grandpa will be very grateful! Yes, as long as you have the needed adapters for it, mine came with all the cables and adapters

Hams please explain radio propagation, with respect to solar flares and sun spots? Does one want less solar storm, flare activity and less sunspot activity for better radio propagation? i think thats right. but would love a good explanation of this. and is it possible to ground a dipole antenna? and how ? if it is. Capitalgentleman is quite correct. However, the propagation of radio wave off the atmosphere is relatively well understood.
Particles emanating from the Sun hit various gaseous atoms in the Earths atmosphere. This ionized gas is able to deflect and reflect radio waves. Various layers in the atmosphere reflect some lower frequencies and allow higher frequencies to pass through to higher layers before being reflected, sometimes ducted within these layers.
Sporadic E is a not very well understood phoneme but is used by hams, such as myself, for long distance communications VHF, UHF and SHF bands. Some radio frequencies pass right out into space with little or no attenuation.
The Solar minimum is good for the average person, as the likelihood of power disruption is less. However, hams generally look forward to high solar activity, unless, of course, you are an HF operator.
Kind regards
Dr Antony

Where can I find audio recordings of solar radio during an eclipses? HI Where can I find audio recordings of solar radio during an eclipses? I have trawled the net without success so far. Totallity if possible but anything would be great. thanks a lot semiconductor http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/halloween_sounds.html
http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/sounds/sounds.htm
http://www.heliotown.com/Radio_Sun_Introduction.html

How can I distinguish solar radio noise from other noise sources? The most striking feature of pure noise is that it has no correlation with itself nor with any other noise; (Auto- or Cross-) correlation is 'zero'. It is totally 'ergodic'. So you can't distinguish solar radio noise from other noise sources. Only Solar version being produced at far higher temperature has extremely high amplitude compared to terrestrial sources. But that doesn't aid in our search. Noises are AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise) each and can't be segregated if added together. It is so because in a 'Sine' wave (forming an orthogonal set) of the three defining characters, only 'amplitude' is linearly additive and indistinguishable from the next one unlike 'frequency' or 'phase'. In noise we are dealing with a situation where a continuum of Sine waves spanning the frequency spectrum with a PSD (power spectral density) set by the source strength, merge to create the phenomenon we call 'Noise'.

Solar Radio is from category: Flashlights.