The Power Is Yours

I had the opportunity to do some troubleshooting the other day. I was operating my HF radio on 10.111 MHz and suddenly it turned off. It came right back on and I continued. A short while later it turned off and stayed off. Hmmm … A small table light stayed on (plugged into the same power bar as my power supply) so I knew the issue had to be either the power supply or my radio. I turned on my VHF radio and it came on. I did observe one of my cats in the general vicinity of the back of my desk where my wiring is. I turned the power supply off and looked around the back where the radios attach. Sure enough, the positive wire from my HF rig was disconnected. It turned out that the spade connector had come off after being interacted with by one of my catz (bad crimping on my part). I crimped on a new connector and attached it to the power supply. When I turned everything on, the HF radio powered up and has had no further issues. Problem solved. Why am I sharing this? Maybe to illustrate the point that it is always best to check the simple solutions before you dig yourself in to much deeper territory. If I had started with the radio as the issue, I would have spent several hours testing and finding nothing. Instead I looked at the simple things first and fixed the problem in just a few minutes.

Namaste, Y’all

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