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GPS Help

plym49

Well-known member
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For future reference, there are custom battery services for the R/C vehicle hobby. They are easily found by searching, they will build you a battery pack to your specifications pretty inexpensively.
 

Wile E. Coyote

Active member
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Lynden WA
Brooke Clarke over at PRC68.com makes some _d-amn_ fine adapters for the type of battery this thing takes (same as PRC-104, PRC-113, SINCGARS, some PSYOPS loudspeaker systems etc.) and it's always good to support others in the hobby when you can. Surplus Lithium batteries also show up on Ebay fairly frequently and - even past their expiry date - are still perfectly serviceable. Bought a bunch awhile ago for my 113 and am still using them :)
 
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WillWagner

The Person You Were Warned About As A Child
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That was a real nice reply that guy sent you :roll: The unit I originally posted about was there last month. He wants $400.00 for it
 

Wile E. Coyote

Active member
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Lynden WA
That was a real nice reply that guy sent you :roll: The unit I originally posted about was there last month. He wants $400.00 for it
Yup. Guarantee it's the same vendor trying his luck on the E-place vs. the swap meets. Guess he was having a bad day when he replied to me like that as we've since come to a deal and it's on its way. Now I just need the AN/PSN-9 and I'll have just about the whole "Evolution of Military GPS" enchilada less the air and naval side of things. So if you come across anyone with a PSN-9...please lemme know. Probably be a beer or two in it for someone :)
 

Wile E. Coyote

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AN/PSN-8 First Military GPS - a set on Flickr

Took some pics once I got it all sorted out. Found that Mike Murphy had NOS vehicle kits for it for a whopping $19, and bought a power supply also NOS on Ebay years ago for which just slides right on in the mount I got from Murphy! Just running it on battery for the moment as the vehicle kit didn't come with the power cord and the weird-ass Canon/ITT/Bendix plug they're using I've never seen before.

Rockwell Collins only made 1400 of these in total so it's quite a find. By comparison, there are over 400,000 DAGRs out there at the moment.

If anyone's seen a manual for one in their Guard unit library or wherever...sure appreciate finding a copy. Nothing on LOGSA.
 

nf6x

Feral Engineer
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Location
Riverside, CA, USA
I've come across a PSN-9, but I'm not interested in selling it, as I'm a bit of a GPS collector, too. I even work in that industry. My PSN-9 appears to function, but the display is bad. So, I can see signs of life on the display that make me believe that it is seeing satellites, but I can't make out the text enough to be useful.

I also have one of those PSN-8 units, and a mount from Murphy that's still in the box. It took that single channel receiver about 40 minutes to get a first fix, and it appeared to be working its butt off to track four birds. It's a far cry from modern units that do a warm start in under 6 seconds and track over a dozen GPS and GLONASS birds at once!
 

Wile E. Coyote

Active member
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Location
Lynden WA
Yeah, the PSN-8 I played with back in 1993 and this one both wouldn't get a fix irrespective of how long you left them looking at the sky unless you input a rough position via INIT. That yours eventually managed it is encouraging! It's fun comparing this to my Garmin 60CSX, lol.

PSN-9...there's a fellow in Luxembourg with one but I don't have his contact info and I doubt he'd sell it either. The display problem on yours...a lot of the early LCD panels were manufactured badly and delaminate - rendering them virtually useless through bleedout, or of a contrast value so low you have to look at them sideways with a half-squint after several beer just to get anything useful out of them (and sometimes even then not.) Seen this problem on a couple of GRC-206 remotes I have and the odd VRC-83 remote display/control unit kicking around. Unless you have a source for replacement LCDs you're kind of out of luck, unless your LCD is simply misaligned with the tigerstripe conductor just below it through drop or other misadventure (seen a couple of SAGRs which had that problem and countless bits of commercial kit.)
 

nf6x

Feral Engineer
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Location
Riverside, CA, USA
I tried cleaning up the contacts and the zebra strip, but it didn't help. If I recall correctly (it's been a few years), the contrast was all screwy and the row drives didn't all work. So I could see stuff that looked like satellite tracking status, but not well enough to actually read anything. If I had more gumption, I might try reverse-engineering the LCD pinout to see if I could haywire something to display the readout. If I ever see a spare control/display box for it available, I'll snatch it up!
 
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