Folks,
I found another very handy use for Anderson Powerpole connectors.
Since they come in multiple colors with the same pins, I chose to
use orange and brown for all speakers and devices with 8Z audio
output (amplifiers, receivers, transceivers). With over a dozen
radios and different speakers, it is a snap to swap speakers from
one rig to another. To prevent the possibility of an accidental
insertion into a red/black DC line, I flipped the speaker power
pole connector 180deg from the DC connector.
Likewise, I use the green powerpoles with #10 green wire to tie
each rig and device to the station ground buss with #0000 back to
the nine-ground rod system at the base of the tower.
For DC power, my shack is powered by a small solar system
consisting of nine 15W panels, a MPPT charge controller and two
100AH deep-cycle batteries. I have one 8-position West Mountain 45A
powerpole panel for plugging in several transceivers and, two West
Mountain 4004 panels with USB connectors for charging our cell
phones and i-Pads. For devices requiring AC (rotors, computers,
DSL, router & wireless, CFL's, etc), I have a 300W and 600W pure
sine wave inverters with 100A powerpoles directly at the battery
terminals.
The powerpole connectors make it very easy to swap loads to sources
of power, not to mention making field events very easy to setup. I
do have a couple of Astron RM-50A power supplies with powerpoles to
cut over to in the event a contest drains the solar system.
Bottom line for powerpoles is that they are a standardized method
of creating flexibility with single, dual and multi-wire systems.
Since they come in ten colors, and stack vertically and
horizontally, they might de useful for rotor and controller
circuits. And they are cheap relative to the cost of everything
else in the shack.
73 Bill N4LG
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