Thank for the offer of accepting questions, I have my first question for you. These LM78nn devices are great, but from what I've seen they are all limitied to approx 1 amp max. Do you know if there is a similar line of components that provide more than 1 amp regulated ?
You can significantly increase the current-carrying ability of a low-cost 3-terminal regulator by adding a cheap power transistor as the control element. It's a very simple circuit and I can probably post an example if requested.
Also Jxet, I'm curious to understand how you where able to determine that the tx had BLT71's. I understand that all the part numbers have been removed, so how did you narrow down to determine it was that specific component ?
When you've been working with RF gear (transmitters/receivers) as long as I have (shudder), you can take a pretty good guess at a component by its packaging and the application in which it's being used.
There aren't a whole lot of 1-2W RF power transistors in that packaging and I know the BLT71/81 are commonly used in cellphones at around 900MHz so, bearing in mind the low-price of the unit and the fact that it fried at 12V, I figured this would be what they're using.