So in the pursuit of amateur radio/SHTF preparedness, I needed a light source that… - Wed, Dec 21, 2011

So in the pursuit of amateur radio/SHTF preparedness, I needed a light source that would run off of the 12v system that my radios run off of for the war room/ham shack. I found this 15’ string of LED lights on amazon that are used for accent lighting. They are just bare LED’s printed on a flexible circuit-board type thing that you can cut to length and solder power via tinned pads. The backing of the circuit board tape material had 3m sticky stuff which wouldn’t stick to the old wood seen in the pictures (I need to insulate and put up some ghetto-paneling so it looks decent. I wasn’t sure if a 15’ length would be enough, so I ghetto-hung the lights to see if I had ample light to see what I was doing not only on the radio, but in the rest of the shack as well. It was night when I took this, and all city-power lights were turned off. Its enough light for me to work and write stuff down.

The only problem is at 15' draws a little under 2 amps, which isn't terribly bad considering how much light it throws off. The good thing is that when they are on, it throws off 0 rf noise.

For those radio nerds out there, thats a icom 746pro sitting on the table (that had its VFO knob replaced not once, but twice), and a icom 706 mk2g mounted on the wall directly in front (you can see the white stickers on it) with the face mounted to the side (so its off the desk) for 2 meter work. Power is distributed via a rigrunner. Everything that deals with power uses Anderson PowerPoles for RACES/ARES compatibly. Antenna is a G5RV Jr hung up on the old TV antenna tower in the back-yard and a mag-mount 2m antenna stuck to the side of the tower until I can mount my j-pole.?