Hi Christy.

First of all, there is no shame in being a newbie because we all had to 
start somewhere.  There are probably three things that you should take note 
of.  First of all, is the current rating of the power supply heavy enough 
for that radio.  That may be a problem, especially if you are relying on 
the surge or intermittent duty current rating.  For FM equipment, it is a 
much better practice to look at the continuous duty rating.  Intermittent 
duty is ok for SSB because you are only drawing full current for brief 
instances of time, generally on your voice peaks.  But FM is drawing full 
current all of the time that you are transmitting.  I am not familiar 
enough with your power supply to know whether it will or will not handle 
the job.

Second, does your power supply have the type of binding post caps that only 
thread out to a certain point, or do they thread off completely?

The third item, you've already taken care of--noting the polarity.

Generally, it is a good practice to put some kind of wire end on the wires 
that will slide over the binding post.  That is partly because of the 
tendency of the wire to slip off the post as you noted in your 
message.  But an even more serious problem is the tendcy for a strand or 
two to work loose from the post and touch the other post, thereby shorting 
out the power supply.  That can be enough to destroy a poorly protected 
power supply.

The type of binding post will govern what type of wire end is most 
suitable.  If the cap doesn't completely unthread, then you could consider 
one of two options.  The first, and probably the better option is to use 
heavy duty spade lugs.  These are available in both crimp on and solder on 
formats.  For low current devices, you can get away with crimp on, but it 
is not advisable with devices drawing more thean 10 amps because at those 
current levels, resistive losses start to generate a great deal of heat, 
and voltage drops become significant.  Remember that if your connections 
are getting warm, then you have lost power which will never be converted to 
radio frequency energy.

The other option is to use banana plugs on the wires and fit them into the 
holes on the binding post screw heads.  This is also not a good option for 
high current divices, but can be a good option for HTs and QRP 
requipment.  I don't think it would be a good move for the TMG707A, which 
probably draws too much current.

If the binding post caps do thread off, then there is a better option 
available--ring tongue wire ends, available from your local hardware 
store.  Just be sure to get ones that are large enough to handle the 
diameter of your wire.  The ones that Radio Shack carries are generally 
badly sized for heavy current applications, but I bought a whole bunch of 
nice ones at my local home improvement store.

The nice thing about the ring tongue wire ends is that there is no way that 
they can slip off the binding posts and once the caps are cranked down they 
make a very secure connection.

I use these throughout my station, and as long as the wire is well soldered 
to the ends, they are extremelyreliable.  You can probably even crimp these 
on for a short period of time to get on the air, but you probably want to 
get someone to solder them at your earliest opportunity.

One last thought.  If your power supply is the 10 amp one that Radio Shack 
sold a few years ago, that is the one with the binding posts on the front 
and the cigarette lighter socket on the front, then I would caution you 
that the filtering on that supply is less than great.  My sister used two 
of those supplies and had a lot of trouble with hum until she finally 
replaced them with Astron supplies.  If that is not the model you are 
using, then I apologize for any moment of panic that I might have 
caused.  I haven't paid as much attention to Radio Shack's latter ham radio 
products, so it's entirely possible that you've got a model of power supply 
that I've never had any experience with.

I hope this info is helpful to you.

73, de Lou K2LKK


At 04:20 PM 12/19/2006 -0600, you wrote:
>I posted this privately to someone, but thought perhaps it might work better
>to post it here, even if I do feel like a complete newbie doing so..
>
>Ok, being as I've never hooked up my own power supply before--when I was
>active before it was just on an HT.. I thought I knew what I was doing, but
>it's not working the way I'd expected. the kenwood 707a came in yesterday,
>and the power supply today. So now the challenge of connecting the two..
>
>I got a radio shack power supply, 13.8vdc as recommended by the manual, 15
>amps. The terminals on the front of it look kind of like knobs on a radio or
>something, they have big plastic covers that you use to screw and unscrew
>them. When unscrewed, I managed to reach down and feel the actual screw, and
>each screw has a hole in it that goes all the way from the top of the screw
>to the bottom. the knobs have holes in them too, going front the back.
>
>As far as the radio DC cable, each has what feel like several very small
>bare wires at the end, but the wires have been twisted together and sawtered
>at the end, so it's more like a single wire at the end of each, positive and
>negative. they are labeled, so I know which is which, and I know which
>terminal is which on the power supply. Of course, everything is unplugged as
>I'm trying to connect them.
>
>So, the first thing I tried was sticking the wires from the radio into the
>holes on the knobs. this didn't work, because rescrewing the knobs still
>didn't hold the wires in place. Next I tried wrapping the wires around the
>correct terminal, around the screw itself then screwing on the knobs. this
>sort of worked, but as it started to clamp down, the knob part started
>pushing the wires away rather than holding them in place. Is there a certain
>trick to this? Should I be feeding the wire into the middle of the screw
>where there's a hole first, then wrapping it? I just don't want to
>experiment too much because I don't want to damage the cable. On the other
>hand, I sure don't want to do it wrong and create a worse problem. I'm
>looking into getting some eyes over here, but finding someone with knowledge
>of these things is far from easy, especially when I can't get on the air
>anywhere except echolink, and I'm not sure which repeaters are close to me
>that also have echolink access.
>thanks!
>--
>Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.1/390 - Release Date: 7/17/2006

Louis Kim Kline
A.R.S. K2LKK
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Work Telephone:  (585) 697-5753