TO: ALL WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS AMATEURS
ALL NON-WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS AMATEURS
FROM: KEN HARRIS WA8LLM
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS INCORPORATED
WV ARES BULLETIN NR 09.24 DATE: June 14, 2009
SUBJECT: UNIFORM POWER CONNECTORS - PART 1 OF 2
How many times have you wanted to install a radio into a vehicle only to find there is no cigarette lighter? How hard is it to get to the fuse box? Have you got power cables long enough to reach directly to the battery? These are some things you should think about before you need them.
One of the best things you can do is uniform your radio power plugs and connections. If your club, group, or organization preplans the wiring of the radio equipment, swapping or installing radios can be a breeze in an emergency.
For many years one of the best power plugs to make a uniform system was the "Red & Black Polarized" two pin connectors. This type of plug usually came assembled on a 12 inch jumper with a plug on each end, which could be cut in half and spliced to other leads.
With the "Red & Black Polarized" connector, one pin is exposed, out in the open, not protected, and the plugs would only go together in one way, which would help prevent the possibility of reversing polarity on the electronic equipment, if everything was uniform.
Each piece of electronic equipment that operated from a "Positive" 12 volt source (Negative Ground), should have had one of these type plug connectors to it. On the equipment being powered, the exposed, unprotected pin should have been used as the positive 12 volts or "Hot" side of the power. On the battery or "Power Source" cable, the exposed, unprotected pin should have been the negative or ground side of the power. The protected pin was protected from accidental grounding of the power source, when not it's in use.
Sometimes special wiring is needed to adapt different pieces of equipment together when some equipment was not wired to be universal. When that would happen it was nice to have special wiring adaptors made up and kept handy.
(Continued in part 2)
Ken Harris WA8LLM
Wood County WV
WV ARES Section Emergency Coordinator
WV ARES District 3 Emergency Coordinator