Playing around in the front yard

[kid_couteau]

Sitting in my front yard on 2 meter powered by solar. Getting some funny looks from passers by lol. Nothing fancy, 20AH SLA battery. 2 25 watt solar panels. Small fold up panel charging my phone. Just having a quiet day outside.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZFGQR_MiueMUfj93qW52cdNU4aUy4wT5

[Alan Georges]

Very nice, K_C.  FT-2900 or the newer 2980?  Either way, between the solar and a can of Monster, it looks like a nice afternoon.  Did you make many contacts?  I like that roll-up slim jim, those puppies just plain work.

Around here, the Bugs. Would. Cary. Me. Away. if I tried doing something like that right now.  Should get pleasant again sometime around October, then I'll be out in the side yard doing something similar.  In the meantime, thanks for the pics.

[kid_couteau]

Hi
Talked to a couple of guys from my ARES team
Fun day
Found a few holes which I have fixed and hope to test tomorrow

[Carl]

  Good job on plugging the holes. You have more solar than you need,but this is a good thing. power and radio adapters to fit situations that might show are always handy.

[kid_couteau]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tBEJQ7k8ZVcgu9muenzthgcGs2dYQET9

Day 2 HF with Yaesu 891
May need to add another battery if used at 100 watts a lot

[kid_couteau]

Hi All

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1efexdjo2aWL0o-AOdZQKuaIf3ym40cc0

The above picture shows my solar controller. Issue is if I plug the radio into the load port it does not get power

I cant figure out why. Any ideas?

[Alan Georges]

Tap directly to the battery for the load, instead of to the load port on the controller.  Things just tend to go better that way, for any number of reasons (below).  For the similar-looking Bioenno controller for my LiFePO4 battery, the manufacturer goes so far as to say to do things this way and ignore the load port.

Possible reasons:
- Potentially less noise, since output current is straight off the battery and not being routed through the controller.
- Low steady current controller, high current radio load.  (This is the case for my lead-acid battery bank, where the 8 amp controller is all the panel needs but it can't handle a 100 watt radio load.)
- Maybe the damn output port doesn't work at all anyway, because cheap manufacturing.
- Phase of the moon / I don't know. 

Anyway, it does no harm to run directly from the battery, and it bypasses a potential source of trouble.

[Carl]

  As diode junctions and any added resistance in the path from battery to radio causes loss,and loss is detrimental as many Ham radios will not maintain stability when voltage drops to the 11.7 to 12 volt range...it is always best to us as HEAVY and as SHORT a power cable as is possible to regain some of the losses. I ,for battery run operations,will build my own 10 gauge wire cable to power my radios as the 'factory' 12 or 14 gauge often has too much loss involved AND is too long as extra length also adds loss to the radio system.

  You want the longest wire path to be from solar panel to the controller and the shortest from the controller to the battery ...and then directly connect to the battery/radio with as short and as heavy (within reason) of a wire as you can find.I often will use an ANDERSON POWER POLE connector to my power cable to allow it to be the shortest length I can get away with and yet still keep the original,or longer,length available.The MPPT charge controller should be avoided as the inverter within such controllers can cause severe noise problems on receivers and the more basic controllers are easier to work with when trouble-shooting. Most radios can handle up to 15.5 volts just fine ...but suffer when only slightly below 12 volts.