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:

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

 

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.

 

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.

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-

 

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:

And a rear view:

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

Happy wandering.