Ham Radio Videos
• Powering My Mobile Amateur / Ham Radio with 12V DC Switching Power Supply
Added at 2014-09-20 10:37:25
I have recently dug my "old" mobile ham radio (Kenwood TM-251A) out of my closet to use as a base station at home. I've tried to use a Radio Shack 3A 12V DC power supply but it would not provide enough current for me to transmit at the middle and high power settings on the radio. I could only transmit at low power, so I could not reach the repeaters that I wanted to. I have seen these 12V 30A 360W power supplies for sale on ebay. Since they are so much less expensive than other equivalent power supplies out there, I thought I'd try one out. Apparently these power supplies are also used with 3D printers and LED lighting. This switching power supply seems to get the job done at a fraction of the size of a transformer based unit.
I'm posting this in case somebody else out there is curious if this power supply is appropriate for communications use. My antenna is a vertical pole triband (2m, 70cm/440, 6m) antenna.
I bought the power supply off of ebay for $24.99 with free shipping from ebay seller kbellenterprises. Here is a link to the listing:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/171379666965?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT