[TowerTalk] PowerPole connectors - speakers, solar system

[Bill Cotter]

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