I have the Cobalt color id (I most likely misspelled that) and I have used 
it a time or two and got the wiring right. It is less than $100 from 
England.  I don't know with any one here in the states are carrying than. 
Hope this help.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Louis Kim Kline" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2006 11:26 PM
Subject: A Bad Scare


Hi.

Earlier in the week, I bought a Mirage B5018G amplifier, and today I
decided to hook it up.  I had gotten someone to eyeball the connectors, and
I put braille labels on the connectors to keep them straight once my friend
described the back panel layout.

Tonight, I decided to hook it up, and after putting wire ends on the power
leads to facilitate connecting it to a power supply, I noticed that I
didn't have the loads balanced very well between the two power
supplies.  So I started shuffling radios around until I had a better
distribution of current loads on the two power supplies in my
station.  Unfortunately I hit a snag when I started reconnecting radios
after swapping them around on the two supplies--nothing on the Astron RS35M
seemed to be working.  I was getting pretty frantic as the inoperative
radios included my Kenwood TW4000A, my Kenwood TS790A, my Kenwood TM3530,
my Ten Tec Argonaut 509 and a couple of DSP filters.  After disconnecting
things, I discovered that the TW4000A was working when it was the only
thing on the power supply.  The supply stayed up as I started connecting
various things until I got to the TM3530 whereupon the power supply
immediately shut down again.

I keep my polarities straight by putting either a piece of electrical tape
or cable ties on the negative lead, but I smelled a rat with the '3530
because I had purchased it used from another blind ham.  So I disconnected
it and ran next door to the neighbor's house to find out what color the
wire with the piece of tape on it was.  Sure enough, it was
red.  Fortunately, I didn't smell any smoke, and I was hoping that the
reason the supply shut down was because there was a diode connected acros
the power leads to short them when reverse polarity was applied.  Two
thought were running through my mind--what a pain in the rear it was going
to be if I had lost the power supply,and how much fun I would have trying
to find another 220 MHz radio at this stage of the game.

I changed the tape on the TM3530 cord to be consistent with the remainder
of the wiring in my station, and figured that I had little to lose by
trying to hook it up again.  Fortunately when I reversed the leads
everything was working again.  I can't figure out why I didn't blow the
fuses in the TM3530 though.  I was surprised that the over current
circuitry in the Astron worked like it was supposed to, because I have
destroyed a couple of older Astron supplies by accidentally shorting them.

By the way, has anyone found a color probe that is sensitive enough to pick
up the color of the insulation on a piece of wire?  That would have saved
me a lot of grief today.

73, de Lou K2LKK



Louis Kim Kline
A.R.S. K2LKK
Home e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
Work e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
Work Telephone:  (585) 697-5753