HF installation

Damo,

The advice I originally wrote in the article now linked to the thread is:

Run a power cable from the Main battery - Not the Aux battery to the control box. (The radio is useless if the fridge has drained the Aux battery and you have an emergency - NOTE: no cold beer because the Aux battery's flat is not classified as an emergency).

See the HF Radio Installation Article.

Fantastic, thanks for the advice guys

Yep re the main battery - when talking to people on skeds I get the impression that most HF users would only clock up a couple of minutes per day on transmit (significant power draw) and maybe 10 minutes on receive (much lower power - monitoring skeds while getting on with the core business of outback travel ..... well, thats what I usually do anyway :-o).

I used to install them and we always connected them to the main battery in dual battery installations.
Another point to note is NEVER connect the negative of the HF power cable direct to the battery. For that matter never connect the negative lead of anything direct to the battery without fusing it.
Always connect it to the chassis or body end of the vehicles negative lead where it connects to the vehicle.
The reason is that if you have a crook, high resistance or broken negative cable between the negative battery terminal and where it connects to the vehicle (engine, chassis or body) then the starting current will take the best /shortest path which is through the nice fat cable connected to your HF.
Believe me the HF is good for nothing after 400+ amps has gone through it. I've even seen where the transmitter wasn't grounded correctly and the starting current has tried to go through the autotune antenna wrecking everything!
If you must connect the negative HF power cable to the battery put a similar fuse to the positive cable in the line.

Damo,
Earth everything, doors, body to chassis and the bonnet. It helps alot.

Cheers