Bike Power for my Kenwood Freetalk XL

[Eckhard Grohe]

How do I power my Freetalk Xl from my bike and have it interfaced into my Eurocomm. Autocomm thinks it will make to much noise or is it that they don't have an adapter for this older Autocomm product?

[Tool Man]

Good luck on that one Eckhard, but I would contact Kenwood and see if they have a cig. adaptor for your radio. I don't believe they do but a phone call couldn't hurt.

 

I power my Ham radio hand held from the bike with the cig adaptor that is available for all Ham HT radios. It's a device that emulates the charging device with the cig adaptor on the other end. You may be able to get away with obtaining another charging unit and adapting that.

 

Do not attempt to snip the end off of your charging device and wire it to the battery though. The HT radio generally runs by 7.5 volts - 8.5 volts. If you run 13.8 into it you'll fry it for sure.

 

Kenwood

[Ken H.]

I'm not sure it's worth the effort, in particular give the potential to introduce ground loop induced noise. They will run for days on a set of rechargeable batteries. I stick with them in mine.

[chrisolson]

Don't remember if the TK-3101 is a FreeTalk XL, but if so ....marketed by starcom ...

 

 

http://www.casporttouring.com/store/merc...starcom_tecstar

[Tom B]

Good point Ken!

 

 

Eckhard

 

If you remote power your transceiver from the bike make sure that you reduce and clean up the bikes 12 volt power to suit the transceiver, (look what voltage the transceiver battery is) and you may need to fit an isolation coil to the transceiver speech line in and another to the speech out line?

 

 

Some of the more professional transceiver companies like Kenwood, Icom and Motorola make dummy battery packs which can often be modified and used, or you can sometimes solder or use terminals to connect to some transceivers power connections, and some transceivers have a aux power socket? If you let me know what transceivers you have I may be able to offer more help. If you don’t already have a transceiver please ask your local Autocom supplier what they recommend, or speak to TopGear for advice about what local products that they can recommend.

 

The Eurocom does have 9 volts coming out of the 5 pin grey Aux lead and this would power a very small low current transceiver up to about 200mA, but if your transceiver is much more you will require a power adaptor.

 

If you are stuck let me know the transceiver or voltage and I will make a power lead for you.

 

 

Autocom-UK-Tom

[Eckhard Grohe]

Chris:

 

Yes, it is that one. Thanks for the link.

 

At this point in time I have ordered the AA battery adapter and will use rechargable batteries to power the radio.

 

Thanks again.

[Eckhard Grohe]

Tom:

 

This is the reply I got from Top Gear.

 

"Eckhard, your going to get a lot of noise, we don't recommend that you do that."

 

So based on this I ordered a AA battery adapter. The problem will be keeping the batteries charged as I expect to camp 2 of 3 nights while on my upcoming ride. I will make an onboard battery charging setup for the radio and camera batteries.

 

The radio is a Kenwood TK3101. The quoted operational time for the radio with a 600 mah NiCAD is 8 hours so I am hoping that the operating time will be proportionally longer with 2000 mah AA batteries. If not, I have to get something for the next trip.

 

Thanks for your interest.

[Tom B]

Ken

 

FYI TG would need to cover themselves as generally speaking if you use an EXTERNAL power supply it could induce noise which can sometimes be cured with isolation, and I suppose they checked which product you had, however if the power supply for transceiver is the same as the Autocom THEN you can use our powered interface lead for TK3101 without noise.

 

The Eurocom (black plastic box) was not able to bike power a TK transceiver; HOWEVER either of the Eurocom-M2 and Eurocom-M4 (with either metal lid, and/or box could power a TK, (like our later Pro series can) via the grey Aux socket, using the correct Autocom interface lead without any induced noise.

 

Can you describe your Eurocom for me or better still email a photo tom.beman@autocom.co.uk

 

You can trust my advice on this matter as I am the designer and UK manufacturer.

 

A bigger transceiver battery will help but in practice, bike powering provides mile after mile of fuss free simply plug in and go use. Batteries and chargers can be a pain when touring.

 

Best regards

 

Autocom-UK-Tom

[Tom B]

Sorry Eckhard, I meant you not Ken!