Cleared to drive, and tinkering

My visit to the heart surgeon went very well yesterday-he was very please with the healing of my chest incision (I’d had an infection, and have been packing the wound with gauze twice a day), and he cleared me to drive.

Feeling full of piss & vinegar, I finished up the Power Pole wiring in the truck:

Ham radio power supply-positive fuse

This is the fuse holder for the positive cable, attached to the fender (inside the engine compartment).

Ham radio power supply-negative fuse.

 

Here’s the negative fuse holder, with its dust/water cover. My Yaesu radios use a fuse in the positive and negative line, so I’ve incorporated both into the wiring. I’ve mounted both fuse holders in separate places, since the right side engine compartment is getting crowded. Just below the fuse holder you can see the heater fan housing.

Ham radio power supply-fuse box

 

Inside the truck, right side-this is a Blue Sea Systems fuse block, mounted to the firewall, fed with #10 wire, and loomed. I’ve since completed the taping of the split loom, so the red wires aren’t visible. I still have to install the ground wires to the negative bus (if you look closely, you can just make out the spot they’re currently connected to at the top of the photo. I’ll fix that this weekend, while camping.

Ham radio power supply- Power Pole outlet

And this is the Power Pole feed point-I removed the cigarette lighter outlet and installed one of these in its place. It works very well, and the old receptacle never worked anyway.

Now, I can plug all my ham gear into the truck-

Ham radio power supply

 

Ham radio power supply-Tac Comm box

And actually USE it in the truck. In the above photo, you can see my FT-857D, FT-400XDE, and LDE AT-200 Pro II units in the Tac-Comm enclosure I purchased from Tac-Comm. Pictured is the TC-2, a larger, longer version for mid sized radios. As you can see, it holds all of my HF/2m/70cm gear quite well.

A closer view:

20170712_121633

And a rear view:

Ham radio power supply-Tac-Comm box, rear view

I’ll be doing a video on the box and install as soon as I can round up some time.

Happy wandering.

 

 

 

 

 

A long day

Today (and a goodly portion of yesterday) I helped a buddy install wiring in his boat in preparation of his Lake Powell trip, for maritime service and CB radios. We ran 10g wires (and Power Pole connectors) from the battery, installed both radios in a large ammo can and installed the antenna for the maritime radio. We also checked the SWR of both CB and maritime radios ( CB is perfect over channel 10, maritime radio is just perfect).

Today we installed wiring for extra lighting, made a couple trips to the hardware store, and installed some of the lighting. Tomorrow we’ll finish up the lighting and Thursday We’ll check/fix the trailer lighting.

Tonight, I’m pretty tired. Off to bed early.