HF Radio Earth Wiring
Submitted: Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 at 22:16
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cobber
Having just read a post on the flat braided wire having to be clean and secure on the Auto tune and the vehicle, I decided to have a look at
mine and give both ends a clean, much to my surprise when looking under the vehicle to find the end which is supposed to be connected to the vehicle is NOT and NEVER had been connected, it was neatly secured with cable ties to the power lead from the auto tune to the battery and it has been like that for the past 5 years when I purchased (Codan NGT) it new and had them install it……….I now assume that when I connect it to the vehicle I should get even better Rx/Tx as I thought it has been OK for the past 5 years.
Reply By: Robin Miller - Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 at 08:17
Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 at 08:17
I'd proceed slowly Cobber
There were some "cute" comments in that other post with some clearly not understanding the difference between earthing and transmission lines as regard to losses.
Presumably your system has been working
well for years and the first rule is to not make things worse.
Set yourself up so that you can listen to the radio and make or break that earth (with engine running).
I know nothing about your actual setup but 1 possiblity is that you could create an earth loop and make reception worse.
Check the reception , if you hear no difference then proceed to step 2.
Step 2 is checking that you antenna tunes correctly - worth doing on a couple of channels.
If you are a VKS subscriber - then pinging the beacons is a great practical way to double
check both your reception and transmission.
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