Vehicular Power Bus – Hell on Earth?

Connecting a piece of gear to an automotive bus is a terrible thing to do… unless the gear manufacturer understands the perils that await including spikes, surges and dips. Fortunately, military specifications consolidate decades of observations to help us understand the vehicle power bus.

Fancy battery posts are not always better

Good ol' lead battery post terminal.
Many hams add power hungry radios to their vehicle power systems. A preferred way to obtain the power is directly from the battery terminals.

I have been adding various gadgets to my Ford Taurus to bring battery power into my passenger area so I can get rid of my cigarette lighter plug for my 2m/440 radio.

Adding a wire to my original battery posts was a problem so I used replacement posts from the car audio market. This turned out to be a mistake.

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Ham Question: Kenwood TM-G707 Display Erratic

Hello all,

I wonder if any of you had your display unit for your Kenwood TM-G707 2/440 transceiver go blank and reboot even while the radio operates just fine.

If I move the wire with respect to the control head in a certain position this happens.

Is this just a case of dirty contacts between the little cable adapter and the control head or have any of you seen the wire in the cable actually break?

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