Leaderboard

I go straight to the battery because I have an insane amount of voltage drop on transmit when I use the factory common ground and B+ bus bar. Like... 14.6v in standby dropping to 12.4v (sometimes less) on transmit. Going direct to the battery, even with my 200w amp, I never see more than a 0.3v drop.

The only few times I have had that kind of a voltage loss, the problem was solved by replacing, or in one case, upgrading the stock battery cables. If you are grounding an amplifier system in the trunk of a vehicle, it is sometimes necessary to bond the rear ground bus to the front of vehicle ground bus with a copper strap or #8 wire. Some cars are not as conductive as others - too much aluminum and plastic these days. There have also been a few instances where I have had to run an additional ground strap from the body ground to the case of the alternator to get rid of "whine" because the factory engine block ground isn't low-impedance enough. ...again, particularly when there is a lot of aluminum and plastic involved on the engine. I guess every install is different, but just hooking accessories straight to the battery, while solving some problems, will create other potential problems....corrosion being #1.

Hey Spaz! I been around just took a break to play radio, holiday, vacation. Time to get back in the swing of things, all is well!!

I'm of the school of professional installers (MECP) who never fuse the negative side of electronics in a modern negative-ground vehicle, but then I also NEVER hook anything directly to the battery of any vehicle made after 1995 or so. That really old-school thought from the 60s and 70s needs to be re-educated. If you think you absolutely MUST hook the radio "straight to the battery", then I guess you should fuse both leads. If you want to do it right, the negative lead should be hooked directly to the body electronics common, or "Star" ground point of the vehicle, (the primary ground for body accessories, isolated from starter) and the positive should be hooked to the vehicle manufacturer's designated accessory power takeoff point with the proper sized fuse as close the the power takeoff point as possible. (Power takeoff point is usually located within 2 feet of the battery, fed with a LARGE red wire, and is normally a plastic-capped block with a large bolt that has everything else hooked to it.) If you install the accessories like the car manufacturer intends you to do, and you never hook anything straight to the battery, then you won't need to worry about the starter back-feeding through your antenna and blowing up your radio. Hooking a radio straight to the battery in any modern car is foolish, and can cause noise pickup from the car's other electronics.

If the vehicles (factory) ground strap from the battery to the engine block fails, the radio acts as the negative side for the whole vehicle. The radio might not like seeing all the current of the starter motor. I have seen equipment fail this way, the end result is the junk pile or needs repair table at the next ham fest.... Yea I'm am back from my forum break

I've bought several dozen programming cables from "bluemax49ers" and had no problems with any of them. More to the point I buy cables that use FTDI instead of Prolific whenever available.