icom A6/A24 POWER SUPPLY

HAS ANYONE WIRED AN ICOM A6 OR A24 DIRECT WITHOUT THE CIG PLUG I WAS TOLD YOU HAVE TO USE A CIG PLUG AS IT HAS A REGULATOR IN IT, I WANT TO UPGRADE FROM ICOM A 22 ,AND BEING A POOR MECHANIC, STUDENT PILOT FUNDS ARE TIGHT.............

CHEERS GARY TOWNSEND

Hi Gary

I don't know your knowledge level so please forgive me if I'm telling you how to suck eggs :-)

Not all cigarette lighter adaptors have regulators but in this case, unfortunately, it looks like it does. I don't have an A6 but I just looked at the manual from the Icom website and on page 3 it shows the input socket with 11 volts written right next to it, this is a pretty good indication that it would not tolerate the nominal 12V from the cigarette lighter socket which, with a good charged battery will actually be sitting at about 13.8V, charging voltage can be up around 14.5V. (Very general rule, devices marketed 12V or 13.8 V are often designed to be tolerant of a car type power supply, if it's got a different voltage marked, don't try it. If it is marked 12 or 13.8 it will probably work but unless it's specifically marked as compatible it's at your own risk.)

Regardless of whether you need the regulator, I personally would not consider connecting a radio to an aircraft power supply without some sort of filter to knock out any noise or power spikes to protect your radio, a properly designed regulator circuit will do this.

All in all, unless you know what you're doing or know, and trust, someone who does I'd recommend biting the bullet and buy the approved cable, at the end of the day it's cheap insurance on an expensive bit of kit. If you know a good ham radio operator, they may be able to help if you still want to go with the home brew approach.

Mark

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