You
might have noticed how Big Signals come blasting in on your ears during
the evening hours on 40 meters, or during DX pileups on 20 meters in the
late afternoons. Well, this was part of the fun with rigs of
yesteryear ... but we can add a simple little VOLUME CONTROL to make
things more enjoyable today.
What you
can do is remove R27, which is located beneath the LCD, and use a couple
of thin wires to bring those two resistor 'pads' up through the OF top
cover plate at the hole for the FUNCTION pushbutton. Then attach
the wires to a small potentiometer that you'll glue to the cover near
that Function PB and ... VOILA! There's your volume
control! See the photos below. And see the
VIDEO
we have showing the result.

The technique I used for
attaching the wires to the 'R27 pads' was to place a 2-position
pinheader there at the pads and then attach the wires to the pinheader
using a 2-pin receptacle. This way I could more easily separate
the cover from the PCB whenever needed.
There
are many ways to accomplish this modification, but basically we're
replacing the 22 k-ohm 'gain resistor' R27 in the final audio amplifier
with a 50K potentiometer (that I have lots of), so when it's turned down
to less that 22K, we have less gain and less volume. I can supply
this potentiometer and pair of wires to anyone wishing them for the
price of return postage (I'll find out and let everyone know - perhaps
$4?) You can also use a mini pot from your own junkbox - anything
from 22k-or-more will work okay.