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#1
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
In article ,
"Eric Fairbank" wrote: Where did you hear that myth??? Iv'e been a marine electronics tech for 30 years and have never heard that one. I know what you stated is total bs but just for drill I did a little test before leaving work today. Hooked up a variable power supply to my Icom 735 with a Bird 4381 power analyst in line (which reads PEP directly). I also verified the wattmeter readings using an o-scope. The power didn't start to drop til the voltage dropped below 10.5v and I was able to receive just fine all the way down to 9.5v. Below that the rig started to die. Eric "Bruce in Alaska" wrote in message ... It is commonly understood that for each volt dropped from 13.6 VDC at the radios PowerAmp DC Terminals, you lose 50% of your PEP Power. So if your at 13.6 Vdc you get your 150 PEP, and at 12.6 VDC you get 75 PEP, and at 11.6 Vdc you get 35 PEP and below 11.0 VDC the internal Voltage Regulators drop out of regulation and the radio goes OFF. It is not a Myth, is is a Fact, and as others have stated, your experiment doesn't prove, or disprove the fact. Also, as Larry stated the 21st Century Icom Rigs have a lot more headroom in the SolidState Amps than just about any other Marine MF/HF Radio, just to deal with this cause. Just try your experiment with ANY SGC designed and built radio. Bruce in alaska I am Old School, and an Old Fart, and I do remember back in the Old Days, before Autotuners, allowed anyone to think they were World Class Radiomen... -- add a 2 before @ |
#2
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
"Bruce in Alaska" wrote in message
... It is not a Myth, is is a Fact, and as others have stated, your experiment doesn't prove, or disprove the fact. Also, as Larry stated the 21st Century Icom Rigs have a lot more headroom in the SolidState Amps than just about any other Marine MF/HF Radio, just to deal with this cause. But.... it is also a fact that any modern rig that is also allowed on commercial vessels (IEC/EN60945) will never show this behavior, otherwise they wouldn't be able to pass the the tests to comply with that standard. Meindert |
#3
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
"Eric Fairbank" wrote:
Where did you hear that myth??? Iv'e been a marine electronics tech for 30 years and have never heard that one. I know what you stated is total bs but just for drill I did a little test before leaving work today. Hooked up a variable power supply to my Icom 735 with a Bird 4381 power analyst in line (which reads PEP directly). I also verified the wattmeter readings using an o-scope. The power didn't start to drop til the voltage dropped below 10.5v and I was able to receive just fine all the way down to 9.5v. Below that the rig started to die. Eric "Bruce in Alaska" wrote in message ... It is commonly understood that for each volt dropped from 13.6 VDC at the radios PowerAmp DC Terminals, you lose 50% of your PEP Power. So if your at 13.6 Vdc you get your 150 PEP, and at 12.6 VDC you get 75 PEP, and at 11.6 Vdc you get 35 PEP and below 11.0 VDC the internal Voltage Regulators drop out of regulation and the radio goes OFF. It is not a Myth, is is a Fact, and as others have stated, your experiment doesn't prove, or disprove the fact. Also, as Larry stated the 21st Century Icom Rigs have a lot more headroom in the SolidState Amps than just about any other Marine MF/HF Radio, just to deal with this cause. Just try your experiment with ANY SGC designed and built radio. Bruce in alaska I am Old School, and an Old Fart, and I do remember back in the Old Days, before Autotuners, allowed anyone to think they were World Class Radiomen... -- Oh, my gosh, it's just killing me to sit here without jumping in! Then when I heard SGC mentioned, I knew that someone besides me had experienced "Bruce's Law". I am compelled to defend his position and scientific observations without reservation. How much midnight oil I've spent working on the DC supply system on "commercial" vessels, trying to reduce the voltage drop. Until the "code" made batterys in the pilot house almost mandatory, can't you imagine running an SGC711 from engine room batterys? Here's a typical example (it is a genuine "commercial", by the way) of a vessel still using this one time popular rig: http://www.alaskaboat.com/sn033.htm Those SGC711's were hard to coax to even 75 watts PEP with any wire less than #4 if you were more than two feet away from the battery! (OK, stretching a little here) And the built-in wire antenna tuner was a charmer, hey? But as the URL and dozens more can show, that not everyone has yet to install an Icom M802. Some earlier SEA's and Icom's with first generation digital VCO tuning were cool, too. A sneeze or laugh in the mic was as apt to change channels as anything if the antenna was fed directly from the radio, and some joker installed #10 wire for DC power! Early automatic antenna tuners were (are) cool, too. A little pitching and rolling in the North Pacific and they would lock up and refuse to even try to tune anymore. Then the transmitter's fabulous SWR power foldback circuit hit the fan and 5 to 10 watts could be used to heat up the tuner's coils and capacitors. (condensers, actually) Lots of this early stuff is still out there. By the thousands. Modern marine SSB radios certainly have improved their ability to survive poor installations, but is that any reason to go as cheap as possible with DC wiring and antenna installations? (RF ground on "Tupperware" boats is probably just as important, but I digress) Old Chief Lynn (besides, tubes help heat the pilothouse and ease aching joints) |
#4
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
Lynn Coffelt wrote: "Eric Fairbank" wrote: Where did you hear that myth??? Iv'e been a marine electronics tech for 30 years and have never heard that one. I know what you stated is total bs but just for drill I did a little test before leaving work today. Hooked up a variable power supply to my Icom 735 with a Bird 4381 power analyst in line (which reads PEP directly). I also verified the wattmeter readings using an o-scope. The power didn't start to drop til the voltage dropped below 10.5v and I was able to receive just fine all the way down to 9.5v. Below that the rig started to die. Eric "Bruce in Alaska" wrote in message ... It is commonly understood that for each volt dropped from 13.6 VDC at the radios PowerAmp DC Terminals, you lose 50% of your PEP Power. So if your at 13.6 Vdc you get your 150 PEP, and at 12.6 VDC you get 75 PEP, and at 11.6 Vdc you get 35 PEP and below 11.0 VDC the internal Voltage Regulators drop out of regulation and the radio goes OFF. It is not a Myth, is is a Fact, and as others have stated, your experiment doesn't prove, or disprove the fact. Also, as Larry stated the 21st Century Icom Rigs have a lot more headroom in the SolidState Amps than just about any other Marine MF/HF Radio, just to deal with this cause. Just try your experiment with ANY SGC designed and built radio. Bruce in alaska I am Old School, and an Old Fart, and I do remember back in the Old Days, before Autotuners, allowed anyone to think they were World Class Radiomen... -- Oh, my gosh, it's just killing me to sit here without jumping in! Then when I heard SGC mentioned, I knew that someone besides me had experienced "Bruce's Law". I am compelled to defend his position and scientific observations without reservation. How much midnight oil I've spent working on the DC supply system on "commercial" vessels, trying to reduce the voltage drop. Until the "code" made batterys in the pilot house almost mandatory, can't you imagine running an SGC711 from engine room batterys? Here's a typical example (it is a genuine "commercial", by the way) of a vessel still using this one time popular rig: http://www.alaskaboat.com/sn033.htm Those SGC711's were hard to coax to even 75 watts PEP with any wire less than #4 if you were more than two feet away from the battery! (OK, stretching a little here) And the built-in wire antenna tuner was a charmer, hey? But as the URL and dozens more can show, that not everyone has yet to install an Icom M802. Some earlier SEA's and Icom's with first generation digital VCO tuning were cool, too. A sneeze or laugh in the mic was as apt to change channels as anything if the antenna was fed directly from the radio, and some joker installed #10 wire for DC power! Early automatic antenna tuners were (are) cool, too. A little pitching and rolling in the North Pacific and they would lock up and refuse to even try to tune anymore. Then the transmitter's fabulous SWR power foldback circuit hit the fan and 5 to 10 watts could be used to heat up the tuner's coils and capacitors. (condensers, actually) Lots of this early stuff is still out there. By the thousands. Modern marine SSB radios certainly have improved their ability to survive poor installations, but is that any reason to go as cheap as possible with DC wiring and antenna installations? (RF ground on "Tupperware" boats is probably just as important, but I digress) Old Chief Lynn (besides, tubes help heat the pilothouse and ease aching joints) Let's just watch out here. I was in a junk shop a while ago and I told the proprietor what was actually hoping to find. We got talking about ships and boats. He stopped and asked if I could tell him about something in back. When retrieved, it turned out to be a marine HF - real live dinosaur (dynosoar?). I think is was Hammerlund or EF Johnson - most of the crystals had been pulled, but it still had a the 2 1625s in the final (and a little burned spot on the tank). I looked at him and said "You know - They haven't made 'em like this for a long time". (Aren't we glad!) Matt Colie - Lifelong Waterman, Licensed Mariner and Perpetual Sailor |
#5
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
In article ,
Matt Colie wrote: Let's just watch out here. I was in a junk shop a while ago and I told the proprietor what was actually hoping to find. We got talking about ships and boats. He stopped and asked if I could tell him about something in back. When retrieved, it turned out to be a marine HF - real live dinosaur (dynosoar?). I think is was Hammerlund or EF Johnson - most of the crystals had been pulled, but it still had a the 2 1625s in the final (and a little burned spot on the tank). I looked at him and said "You know - They haven't made 'em like this for a long time". (Aren't we glad!) Matt Colie - Lifelong Waterman, Licensed Mariner and Perpetual Sailor A lot of the OLD Northern Radio Co. AM Sets had 807/1625's in them. when I started at Northern, we still were servicing those and I have very fond memorries of traveling all over the State of Alaska, hauling a RCA Tube Caddy full of 807's, 1625's, 811's and an 813 or two.... I even remember when we used 866A's in the Power supplies, as Recitifiers. Bruce in alaska -- add a 2 before @ |
#6
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
Bruce in Alaska wrote in news:bruceg-
: I even remember when we used 866A's in the Power supplies, as Recitifiers. Yecch.....flashovers! Been there, done that.... Bruce, have you seen what an AM transmitter looks like, now? A 50KW AM broadcast transmitter uses POWERTAB transistors for final output stages! http://hawkins.pair.com/wabcnow/wabcn14.jpg That little board puts out 1KW with 240VDC applied... Amazing. A 50KW broadcast transmitter cooled with muffin fans....55KW from the power company...50KW to the antenna! |
#7
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
On Thu, 02 Mar 2006 00:51:43 -0500, Larry wrote:
http://hawkins.pair.com/wabcnow/wabcn14.jpg That little board puts out 1KW with 240VDC applied... Do they put 50 boards in parallel? |
#8
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
Wayne.B wrote in
: Do they put 50 boards in parallel? No, it actually has something like 248 boards, in parallel. There is one board that always puts out 100 watts, the only board turned on at the negative 100% modulation peak. The other boards are controlled by a long driver board mounted outside the RF shield and hooked to them with big ribbon cables. The modulation audio simply turns all but the one on and off as the audio waveform is converted to the digital data. With no modulation, half the boards produce a 50KW output carrier. As the audio waveform goes up, more boards switch in up to 100% modulation peak, then back to half and down to only the one 100W output, then back up. The output amounts to a sum of all these boards' square wave switching output. The big square wave is sent to a tuned circuit that filters out the harmonics with more low-pass filters to keep the neighbors happy. The output, of course, is an amplitude modulated sinewave that is quite smooth, considering it comes from a digitized square wave. Being actually a switching power supply at the RF carrier frequency, the boards are 95+% efficient like the power supply in your computer....making the company VERY happy as the electric bill comes down from 130KW load, the rest wasted as heat, to 55KW load with only 5KW of heat coming off with simple cooling fans. Simply amazing switcher technology, considering AM's analog roots. Harris has a pretty good lock on the market for AM transmitters, now. The boards come in 100W, 200W, 500W and 1KW power levels, I think. Binary switching them as the audio waveform is digitized makes quite small power steps hardly recognizable in the modulated output. Listen to almost any clear channel AM station in the USA and you'll be listening to a Harris DX-50 these days. Hell, WWL on 870Khz was on the air through the hurricane with theirs....near New Orleans. |
#9
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
In article ,
Larry wrote: Bruce in Alaska wrote in news:bruceg- : I even remember when we used 866A's in the Power supplies, as Recitifiers. Yecch.....flashovers! Been there, done that.... Bruce, have you seen what an AM transmitter looks like, now? A 50KW AM broadcast transmitter uses POWERTAB transistors for final output stages! http://hawkins.pair.com/wabcnow/wabcn14.jpg That little board puts out 1KW with 240VDC applied... Amazing. A 50KW broadcast transmitter cooled with muffin fans....55KW from the power company...50KW to the antenna! No, i really haven't kept up on Broadcast Engineering, since I left that field in the late 60's, in a previous life. I understandf that some of the newer Transmitters using Class D & E Amps are very efficent and compact in the extreme, compared to what I was working with. Bruce in alaska -- add a 2 before @ |
#10
posted to rec.boats.electronics
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what size wire to use for 30amp 12v circuit ?
In article ,
"Lynn Coffelt" wrote: Oh, my gosh, it's just killing me to sit here without jumping in! Then when I heard SGC mentioned, I knew that someone besides me had experienced "Bruce's Law". I am compelled to defend his position and scientific observations without reservation. How much midnight oil I've spent working on the DC supply system on "commercial" vessels, trying to reduce the voltage drop. Until the "code" made batterys in the pilot house almost mandatory, can't you imagine running an SGC711 from engine room batterys? Here's a typical example (it is a genuine "commercial", by the way) of a vessel still using this one time popular rig: http://www.alaskaboat.com/sn033.htm Those SGC711's were hard to coax to even 75 watts PEP with any wire less than #4 if you were more than two feet away from the battery! (OK, stretching a little here) And the built-in wire antenna tuner was a charmer, hey? But as the URL and dozens more can show, that not everyone has yet to install an Icom M802. Some earlier SEA's and Icom's with first generation digital VCO tuning were cool, too. A sneeze or laugh in the mic was as apt to change channels as anything if the antenna was fed directly from the radio, and some joker installed #10 wire for DC power! Early automatic antenna tuners were (are) cool, too. A little pitching and rolling in the North Pacific and they would lock up and refuse to even try to tune anymore. Then the transmitter's fabulous SWR power foldback circuit hit the fan and 5 to 10 watts could be used to heat up the tuner's coils and capacitors. (condensers, actually) Lots of this early stuff is still out there. By the thousands. Modern marine SSB radios certainly have improved their ability to survive poor installations, but is that any reason to go as cheap as possible with DC wiring and antenna installations? (RF ground on "Tupperware" boats is probably just as important, but I digress) Old Chief Lynn (besides, tubes help heat the pilothouse and ease aching joints) Ah Oh, I feel a Story coming on.... StonerWatts .... A Real Tale about MF/HF Marine Radio...... Years ago, I was working for Northern Radio, as a Field Tech/Radioman and getting the Alaska State Ferries ready for their Annual SOLAS Inspections. The State wanted to replace the venerable Northern N550 MF/HF SSB Radios with something totally SolidState, and had put out the refit for BID. Well Don Stoner, and his partner PeeAir Gorrale, wanted to get their SGC711 into the US Market, so they bid the job really LOW, and got the contract to refit all the State Ferries. Their guys did the installations, and had left the vessels, for me to get them thru FCC/SOLAS Inspections. I did everything else, first and left the MF/HF Radio's for last, and when I finnally got around to doing the preinspection testing, found that all but one wouldn't meet Frequency Tolerance, and NONE of them would meet PowerOutput Requirments, using the accepted Testing Procedures, expected by the FCC Field Engineers, of the day. I got ahold of the Port Captain, and explained the problem, and since these radios were NEW and under Warrentee (sp) that it was SGC's problem to rectify, but since the Inspection was setup for the next morning, SGC better get their collective Ass in gear, or the ships would fail the Inspection and not be ready to sail on schedual. SGC was summoned and one of their Field Techs reset all the Crystal Frequencies and did his best to get the Power Output up to spec's. They worked all night on the first boat due for inspection, and when I showed up, one hour before Inspection time, the Power problem still wasn't resolved. Finally, the Tech, called his office and Don Stoner, drove out, and showed up just as Bob Zinns, the FCC Engineer, did and they came aboard together. While Bob and I went thru all the other Inspection Items, don worked on the 711. After 2 hours, Bob and I were ready to do the MF/HF Radio Inpsection, and we were presented with Don Stoner, and his very expensive Tek Storage OScope, connected across a 50 Ohm Dummy Load, and he said he would demonstrate the Power Output of the 711 with this Test Setup. Mr. Zinns looked very skeptical, and I didn't say a word, but Don proceeded with his demontration. He picked the Mic and mashed the PTT and sope the test phrase "Five, five, five", into the mic. He had the Storage Oscope set to capture the Peak Voltage Pulse of the transmission, and then showed the assembliadge the reading, and got out his calculator, and computed the PEAK Envelope Power for that, very narrow Pulse. "Yup" he said, "just exactly 152 PEP Watts". Mr Zinns asked hm to demonstrate that on a Peak Reading Bird WattMeter, and Don stated that he would not, that his demonstation was sufficent. Mr Zinns took out an 801 PinkSlip and Failed the vessels SOLAS Inspection, citing the lack of spec'd Transmit Output Power. I tested the radio, in the accepted way using a Bird Wattmeter, and found that we could get maybe 80 Watts PEP out of it with a Maximum Scream in the Mic. Everyone went home and the FCC and SGC had a WAR of Fax's and Phonecalls, between the Seattle Field Offce, FCC Headquarters, State of Alaska Ferry Systems, Port Captain, and SGC, ect. After three days of this, it was determined by the FCC's Chief Engineer, that Don Stoner's method of testing did in fact prove that the radio was in compliance, and that the FCC Field Offices would accept that method of testing, for the SGC711 only, and Issue SOLAS Certificates for the Alaska State Ferries which had SGC711 Radios fitted. The long and short of the story is: All the SGC's were stripped off all the Alaska State Ferries within 6 Months, for the simple reason that they couldn't talk to any of their regular BaseStations, on a consistant basis, as they were used to doing with the N550's previously fitted. All were replace with Icom's first generation MF/HF Radios that actually would "Whistle up" to 150PEP on a Wattmenter. Northern Radio continued to do all the FCC/SOLAS Annual Inspections, untill I left the company. The State of Alaska Communications Shop, took over the job and was still doing it when I joined the FCC a few years later, as the Southeastern Alaska Resident Field Agent and started doing the FCC/SOLAS Inspection on the Alaska Ferries as the FCC Inspector. The StonerWatts Story is still around in FCC Lore, and told in Marine Radio Shops, all around the North Pacific. Bruce in alaska just cause you can see the spike on a scope doesn't mean you can actually talk to someone...... -- add a 2 before @ |
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