I finally took the plunge and bought myself a Yaesu ft 817nd in Feb 2006, here on these pages i intend to share ideas and projects i have that i have come up with to improve my portable station operatning.
Heres a real easy way to protect against accidently putting the power wires on to an external battery the wrong way round. You will need a high current full wave bridge rectifier (i used a 25amp rectifier).
First you need to identify the four pinouts on the rectifier and this is easy, two are marked with a symbol like an "S" lying on its side. Ok if can see these they go to the battery and it does not matter which way round you connect them it just makes no difference....believe me.
Next part leaves us with two pins one marked + and the other marked - , these are connected to the radios lead + going to positive and - going to negative. These should be treated just as if they are the battery terminals see the pics below.
Here is the pinouts on one side of the recitfier, the left "S" symbol goes to the battery and + goes to the postive lead from the radio.
And the other side, again the "S" to the battery and negative to the radios negative lead. wrap plenty of insulation tape around the rectifier so nothing shorts.....that simple!!!
After searching sites, reviews and forums regarding the FT 817 on the net i found a common thread. Care to take a guese? Well if you own one these radios you probably know excatly what im talking about...yes the internal batterys are the next best thing to a waste of time.
Sure we cannot have it all ways and for the radios size and what it does i have to admit the fact that internal batterys dont last long isnt a big issue as the radio can be powered from an external source .
Firstly i will say keep your eyes open and use your imagination , i dropped lucky in that my son had a 24v electric scooter which eventually fell apart and became unsafe. My XYL wanted to take it to the recyling centre however i stopped her knowing the batterys were still holding a good charge so out came the screwdriver.
Inside i was blessed with 2 X 12v 4.5ah sealed lead acid batterys, i removed them wired them in parallel and ended up with 12v @ 9ah....not bad for nothing...hey i might go into the recycling buisness!!
A local store sells everthing for 1 pound and funnily enough is called the pound shop. I found a small plastic container there which holds both batterys snugly (with i a little plastic bag for packing). And some pics of the battery.......................................................
For the terminal posts i used a couple of nuts and bolts.
Inside the plastic container with the lid open you can see the 2 X 12v batterys.
Charged and ready for action and all for a pound...money that is not weight!!