My Civil Air Patrol wing upgraded my home radio station, replacing my Motorola Micom 2 with a Micom 3F. The new radio has a nicer display, does ALE, etc. They were also kind enough to send me home with a new power supply, since they'd really like me to keep my radio on full-time so I can be paged over HF. The new unit is a 45-amp switching supply. It's normally fixed-voltage, but has a jack that you can insert a shorting plug to cause it to bump up the voltage roughly .5V to quick-charge. Better yet, there is a module you can get that turns it into a 4-stage battery charge maintainer. I looked online. and saw them for $65+ plus shipping. However, I also made another discovery: the DPS series of power supplies (and the IQ-4 controller) is actually made for DuraComm by Iota Engineering, and is identical to their DLS series (which seems to be marketed more to RV'ers -- which also tend to get ripped off, but not nearly as badly as telecomm pros do...) -- I call it a power supply; my father-in-law would call it a "converter"). I was able to find an The price on these is actually quite reasonable, too -- cheaper than a [decent] equivalent supply marketed to hams, and has built-in battery maintenance. Good enough! |
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