Installing a Radio

[RickBowman]

I have installed an am/fm/cd radio aboard. It is suppose to be marine rated, but it's inside the pilothouse so that rating really is of small consequence imho. There are 3 wires that I should hook up. 1 black wire goes to earth/ground/negative, 1 red goes to +12V/hot all the time, 1 yellow goes to the accessory position on the ignition switch. The Yanmar Ignition switch on my vessel PS32PH does not have an accessory position so that sorta shoots down the radio manufacturers installation proceedure concerning the yellow wire in this application. I do not have any breakers on the distribution panel that are energised when the 4 position battery selector switch is turned to the off position which I will do if leaving the vessel for any length of time. That leaves me wondering; what would ABYC instruct for this occasion? Should I not use the yellow wire; this is getting way to easy isn't it? Then could the red wire be attached to the battery feed connector on the back of the battery selector switch from the house battery #1; the radio already has a 10 amp blade fuse installed protecting it and then additionally also install an inline 10 amp fuse to protect the line from the battery selector switch to the radio?.
I believe that the only reason for the red wire to be connected to an always energised connection is to keep the clock setting, I bet it's not a Rolex, and to keep any saved stations from being lost. Anyways, I don't want to let the smoke out of the wiring or out of the radio as that is never a good sign. Any other suggestions, or is this just beating a dead horse?

[cpcohen]

Here's a suggestion from "first principles":

In a car, your radio will not turn on if the ignition switch is "off". It only works if the ignition switch is on "acc" or "on". This is a safety feature -- it ensures that the radio is off when you leave the car.

One way to accomplish this is to wire the radio red "+" to the battery "+", and require that the yellow wire _also_ is energized in order for the radio to be turned on. If the ignition switch is "off", the yellow wire isn't energized, and the radio can't be turned on.

On a boat, I wouldn't want my radio turn-on to depend on the ignition switch position. So, I'd want the yellow wire _always energized_.

I suspect that the right thing to do is to hook the yellow wire to the same "+" terminal as the red wire (or just hook it to the red wire near the radio).

If you leave the boat, and the radio is left running, your battery will go flat. So you'll have to be smarter than the average driver.

I'm assuming that you have a switch and fuse (battery master switch, or circuit breaker) between the radio and the battery's own "+" terminal.

I would buy a beer for a local auto sound installer, or ask a marine electrician, before acting on this advice . . .

Charles

[camaraderie]

Run the red to the battery and the yellow to a switch...battery switch or circuitbreaker panel switch which is preferable. The red wire will keep your stations and clock setting and the yellow will turn on the radio/amp/cd.
If you don'tcare about the clock & stations...run both the red and yellow to a single terminal on your breaker panel.

[RickBowman]

Thanks CP and Cam.
I decided that due to frequent boat moves whilst cruising it was not necessary to keep stations saved and seeing how there is already a ship clock and really didn't need a digital rolex, I just connected the two power wires to individiual fuses on a power distribution block, that is fed from the breaker panel. It is working well at this time and the Bose speakers sound adequate inside of the pilothouse. If I could figure out what is wrong with my proceedure of posting images on Sailnet I would upload the image of the install, but after my first couple of successful image uploads I was never able to upload again. The few successful image uploads are in this forum under "Roll Call". Any ideas?

Thanks again,
Rick
s/v Judy Ann
#20

[camaraderie]

Rick...I know the Admin has been working on fixing some of the image uploading issues on the site. I also understand that Macs may have a problem but will assume you are using a PC.
What I do is simply used the Advanced Reply choice...then click on manage attachments and upload the (properly sized) picture from your PC. Once it is accepted...come back up to the message and click on the paper clip icon to attach it to your message. Hope that works for you as it just did for me! absea.JPG

[RickBowman]

Cam,

I tried again with no joy. I started with a standard image captured with a Cannon digital camera, which was uploaded and saved on my home PC. The size is 640x480, 23.7 kb. It failed to upload to sailnet. I then resized it using Paintshop Pro to 202x151, 4.32 kb. That also failed to upload to sailnet. I carefully followed your instructions. The images are saved on the PC in JPEG format. I had no trouble uploading the images on the "Roll Call" thread, which is what surprised me when I could no longer upload. Are others having difficulty uploading?

Thank you,

Rick

[camaraderie]

Rick...are you getting any error message? Are you using a dial-up connection that is slow and timing out or do you have security featrues turned on that might disable your ability upload/download active content? That is all I can think of. You might try messaging admin Jeff after you try the above if you still don't get results. Obviously the feature is working so it has to have something to do with your PC configuration or connection I think....being no wiz myself.

[RickBowman]

Cam,

The messgae that I get is.....

"Upload of file failed."

Thanks for your suggestions.

All I know is that I used to be able to upload images, and without any changes made to my end I no longer am able to do so.

Recently I started to get an active-x choice box appearing when I tried to log in on sailnet and was expereincing unusual log in times to sailnet. I permanently ended the active-x control box by disabling it, and now I can log into sailnet quickly, but still can not upload photos. The next time that I am at a high speed wireless with the laptop I will try an upload again.