| Author |
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Chris142
| | Posted on Saturday, April 26, 2003 - 5:54 pm: | 
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I'm leaving tomorrow morning @ 4am to go to a truck show about 200 miles away (one way). I'm driving my old truck.
I have a Galaxy 959 in it, a 102' steel whip and spring. This setup works pretty good...Prolly better than most guys running power through shorter loaded antenna's.
I got a great idea! I decide to put my killer bee 250 watt linier in the truck for the trip. (mistake #1)
Ok so all I have is #10 wire, Plenty big enough to do the job. It's also too large for my soldering iron to solder......I use a lighter (mistake #2)
HMMMMMMMM.Talking to myself "I thought I had some fuse holders, guess not". I tried soldering some female blade connectors to the wire so I can at least use a blade fuse. Nope I filled them up with solder. Cut off the connectors and went straight to the battery. (mistake #3)
The screws that hold the cover on the linier are stripped. I found some larger diameter ones, These are longer than the old screws. (mistake #4)
I plugged in the non-fused linier and heard a noise and it emitted a terrible stench/smoke(mistake #5)
The long screw touched a capaciter, shorting it out! Killing my linier.
Looks like I'm goin "Barefoot" tomorrow. |
Stepchild
| | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 12:02 am: |
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Gosh Chris,God forbid but it sounds like your having my kind of luck.Hope you didn't hurt it to bad.Good luck,Stepchild |
de
| | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 9:49 am: |
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Solutions the mistakes....
Mistake 1...I will save this for last, please read on.
Mistake 2...You should use the same size wire, or slightly larger that comes out of the radio or amp. Anything smaller will probably not work very well. If you must mismatch go to the slightly larger size.
Mistake 3...You can make your own heavy duty soldering iron. Just get a short length of #8 or thicker grounding wire--you have seen it before, that real big diameter wire used by the electric companies for grounding. Using a large daimeter bolt or similar make a little coil leaving 2 pigtails on each end. The coil should be slightly larger than the nozel hood on your propane torch. With a stainless pipe clamp use one pigtail to clamp the coil over the torch end so the flame blows in the little coil you just made. Make the coil a little loose so the flame can get air and you can light the torch. Bend the other pigtail down to the center of the coil and strate out. Light the torch. The flame will heat the coil and make the tip very hot. Tin the tip and go to soldering.
WARNING, WARNING you are using a very hot flame and a very hot tip. Be very very very very careful and never touch the tip with your bare skin unless you first dip it in cold water.
ALSO use fues holders for even blade fuses. They are available at any auto parts store. And fuse BOTH the positive and the negative lines.
Problem 4...Stripped the holes ey? Remember only tighten hand tight. But here is how you fix that. Your lid probably had more screws than needed anyway. Redrill a hole just slightly smaller than the current size of hole. PLEASE be careful not to get the shavings in the amp, take the appropriate precautions. Now just use some of those small short self tapping metal screws they sell at Radio Shack. I have even seen some pretty small self tapping metal screws at Wal Mart. If you redrill just the corners this should hold the top on nicely. BUT remember only hand tight.
OK for Problem #1, it would have done you little good because of the nature of radio waves in a line of sight mode. Radio signals travel in a line of sight mode travel along the surface of the earth/strate line up to and just a little bit beyond the horizon. Horizon varies with obsticles and such but horizon is not that far. Skip mode travels farther but unless you traveled far enough, the first skip bounce would have missed your home town anyway. So at best under normal conditions your range with a mobile antenna of any kind (without repeater support) would probably be no more than 20 miles give or take 10 miles or so depending on the height of the other antenna of course.
You might want to consider making that propaine torch soldering gun. It truly does work. I use it frequently when I solder outside. Even in freezing temps that thing has never failed to do the job.
DE |
Weakeststation
| | Posted on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 4:40 pm: |
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Most people wouldn't even tell on them selfs like that.. It take a big man to do it, i tip my hat to you sir.... Hopefully no one in your town visits this forum because that could be
(mistake #6) a burglar.. |
Chris142
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 3:52 pm: |
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It lives! I removed the melted capaciter, bought one at Rat Shack and installed it.
Then I bought a 12 pack of Pepsi and headed over to the Closest Cb shop/limiter clipper. Gave him the soda's in exchange for him to put the linier on his bench. He said it was working like it should. Who wants to be my first customer? ;)
Now since I have proved myself to be incompetent at times I stopped at the auto parts store on the way back and bought several inline fuse holders.
One I have installed right at the linier on the (+)side. Another I have right at the battery. The rest I put in my tool box for future use.
Ya, It's overkill and one at the battery would be fine but I know that if sometime in the future I do something stupid again it will have some protection. |
Keithinatlanta
| | Posted on Thursday, June 26, 2003 - 4:25 pm: |
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Hey Chris, you didn't tell us about the truck show!! Was it worth going too? And did your radio perform anyway, even though you had to live without an extra set of boots?
Keith in Atlanta |
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