Railfan Technology > Locomotive Radio Installation Help

I am wanting to install a locomotive radio but I am having a hard time getting there. What will I need to accomplish this? How and where can I find a voltage reducer (110v to 64v) and an antenna that will connect to the radio? I would want the radio to stay on at all times. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Happy Railfanning

You need a DC power supply of 64 to 72 Volts. Unfortunately, there is no market for supplies with output voltages above 48 V, making such a beast very rare and expensive. A little Googling led me to the following
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_2105631_-1

It only outputs 54 Volts, but for running the radio in receive-only, it might work fine. Given that a one-off, custom made supply would cost several hundred dollars, this might be worth a try. Do NOT try to transmit with that radio, with reduced supply voltage. Of course, it would be unlawful for you to transmit under any circumstances.

As for the antenna, I assume the radio has a typical UHF connector. Any scanner antenna and cable, terminating in a UHF connector, would work.

Are you trying to use a locomotive radio as a base? If so what is the radio make and model? The clean cab units should have a 12 volt input as the radio is actually a 12 volt radio with a power supply that drops the loco voltage down.

On a side note most loco radios do not scan and most on the used market are not narrow band compliant and if you are going transmit you need a narrow band radio. For monitoring only wide band is just fine.

Feel free to drop me a pm with a phone number and I'll call you. I'm a two way tech for a Kenwood shop and do work on RR radios for several different users from tourist lines up to a class 1.


Jim

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