[NLRS] Project boxes at the next breakfast

[Doug Reed]

I had some die-cast aluminum "project boxes" given to me and I'm passing 
along the favor.

The boxes are USED, but quite nice in that they have a male and female 
silver-plated N connector mounted on the ends and only 3 excess screws 
in the body. The boxes are about 1.5" thick, 2.5" wide, and 4.3" long. 
Four screws secure the bottom. The connectors and the two mounting wings 
on the sides exceed the dimensions of the box. They have a "famous 
maker" name on the top and each one has a gas-discharge tube inside. 
They are still usable for their original purpose but might require minor 
modification for use on the 902 ham band. Can you guess what they are? I 
was surprised when they were given to me and I saw how little was 
inside.....

If you have a small project that needs a heavy-duty box with a pretty 
good RF seal, these might fit the bill. Since they have connectors 
installed all the hard work of drilling the holes and tapping them are 
done. If you don't want to use it as an inline box, you can always 
replace the male N connector with a female connector or something else. 
My experience with this type of box is that the RF seal can be very good 
but you will need to smooth away any rough spots in the crack around the 
screw-on lid if you want that last 10-20dB of isolation.

I've made arrangements to get the boxes to Donn WA2VOI at the Nokomis 
Beach coffee meeting tonight and he will bring them to the next NLRS 
breakfast meeting. If you get a box and make good use of it, let me know 
what you built in it. I can forward that back to my source. If these go 
over well, I might be able to get more.

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.