So , in addition to my great need for an antenna that works, I am also trying to cleanly wire up the 13.6 to the equipment in my shack. Along with many others I turned to Anderson Power-pole connectors. Having struggled with trying to power it all up and keep it neat for may years, I have to say that I think this is going to work out!
Imagine: one connector for every piece of equipment that uses "12" volts!
Not only is it one connector, the parts of the connector are the same! No "Male" or "Female" to keep straight, no need for different housings for different size contacts, what a great idea.
However, in making up the "pigtails" to connect my Heathkit, which has this octal 13 pin connector on it. the cable has four 14 gauge black and four 14 gauge red wires. Unfortunately I couldn't cram all the wires into the powerpole contact. So I made a very messy splice (actually, I made two ugly splices) to a short length(s) of 10 gauge wire. . . very ugly and is going to require some re-think and rework.
The amazing part of it all is that now all my radios and power supplies will use the same connector for power, eventually I will. It is so obvious, why didn't I do something like this before? I am about to wire my Ham Radio insert for 12v powerpoles. This way the wiring, at least for power, can be neat and under control. The coax may never be so easy to manage, but the power distribution will be a work of art.
I did manage to do some listening this past weekend. I think the weather was way too nice to stay inside. So I didn't!
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