Dr. Arnie Coro, of Radio Havana’s DXers Unlimited, noted on his July 22/23, 2008 show:
The top quality microphones used by cellphone manufacturers are ideal for amateur radio use. A broken down, or an obsolete cellphone is a low cost source of two highly valuable devices… a nice high quality electret microphone element, and an also high quality optimized for voice communications earphone… So, follow your friend ARNIE CORO´S advice and don´t let your friends throw away the old analog cellphones before removing the microphone element and the earphone capsule…
For your information, my amateur radio two meters band handie talkie, a recycled unit itself, now has a much better microphone element than the original one, thanks to that simple surgical electronic transplant operation…The microphone from a Nokia analog cellphone has proven to receive much better audio reports than those that I got with my factory installed handy talkie built in microphone, an it took just about an hour to extract the analog Nokia cellphone microphone element and then install it on the old 1991 vintage YAESU FT 411 two meters band handie talkie… Reports received on the local 145.190 Havana Metropolitan Area repeater were very encouraging, with several of my friends telling me that the Nokia microphone element from the cellphone was sounding much better than the original element used by YAESU… And of course that as soon as I am able to get a hold of another broken down cellphone I will use it to replace the active element on an very old 6 meters band transceiver that has received some not very nice audio quality reports recently…
Not being a cellphone user myself, I don’t know how many of these are still available, but you might want to keep your eyes open for them.
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