My wife and I are buying a used Icom IC-7300 from a local ham. This leaves me with antenna and power supply to source.
-
My wife and I are buying a used Icom IC-7300 from a local ham. This leaves me with antenna and power supply to source.
For power, I can run it from the LiFePO4 I got for my mobile rig (to make it easy to move between vehicles) temporarily, and if I take it mobile, but I'm also looking at AC/DC power supplies. I vaguely assume I don't want to just throw some ferrites on a meanwell switching power supply that I happen to have sitting around to block common mode noise, but want something designed for #AmateurRadio use. At the same time, I'm not planning to buy a hungry linear power supply out of the gate. Maybe someday if I get truly obsessed.
I was looking at 30A 12V nominal switching power supplies in the $75-90 range. Is there anything in particular I should pay attention to?
-
Dave Andersonreplied to Michael K Johnson last edited by
@mcdanlj TBH, if you already have a powerful mean-well, you could likely do worse. They're good supplies, and you can _certainly_ get worse ones that have "ham radio" listed on the brochure
My fixed station is currently on an Alinco DM-330MV. It's Fine, and by that I mean I've not been made to think about it a single time since setting it up, which is how I like my PSUs.
I might also suggest a RigRunner distribution plate and a stash of Anderson Powerpoles for wiring.
-
@mcdanlj The RigRunner is particularly nice because it gives you a busbar with fused powerpole taps, so you can standardize all your connectors on powerpoles and either plug batteries straight into radios, or plug a PSU into the busbar and then hang all the things you need off that.
One slight gotcha: I plug my batteries into the busbar to charge. Very handy. But the busbar isn't polarized, so if you turn off the PSU, the batteries will start supplying.
-
@mcdanlj In my case I solved that by just unplugging the batteries when I'm not explicitly recharging them, but the joy of powerpoles being modular means you could also make yourself some inline cutoff switches, or even a fancy automatic charge controller that disconnects the batteries when the busbar loses power. All nice and modular, makes experimenting and mucking about a zillion times nicer IME.
-
@mcdanlj Another thing to consider is you'll want to pay some mind to station grounding, which is not the same (but interfaces with) the electrical safety ground. Unless you use a _really_ nasty supply, grounding issues can overpower any supply noise easily.
(but also don't sweat it _too_ much, there's a lot of scare stories about radio grounding, and a really good station needs to worry about it... but modern equipment is very good and quite forgiving compared to what ham authors learned on)
