External usb power for 125AT/75XLT

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nanZor

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Got a few cellphone external battery packs over the holidays, and put them to use with my 125 / 75.

I'm not really interested in recharging the AA's from these external packs, but using them as a backup, since it is likely the cellphone packs will be with me more often than backup AA's.

To get these units to operate continuously from the external cellphone packs and not try to charge the AA's, I just pulled the AA's out of the scanner.

So far everything works fine with a RS 4000mah, RS 6000mah, Samsung 9000mah, and Mophie 6000mah pack. No special cabling needed. I was concerned that the Mophie wouldn't work since it lacks an on/off switch, but no problem even with the most common usb/data cabling. No need for a "charge only" cable either.

Surprisingly I haven't heard much switching noise from the voltage converters inside the packs, and the cabling doesn't seem to have a drastic affect on antenna characteristics.

I haven't looked all over the spectrum for noise, but so far so good. I haven't timed exactly how long these external packs will run but obviously it depends on their capacity. And of course if you don't need to charge AA's, then pulling them out and using a typical wall-wart cellphone charger works too.

I was expecting this setup to be non-practical, but it works ok for backup, and maybe Uniden has the 5V usb filtered - can't really say. Maybe it is because I'm lucky enough not to have been given counterfeit products, which is always a serious issue with products at this low consumer level.

At any rate, being able to run my 125at / 75xlt from an external cellphone battery pack via the usb port is kind of fun, if not downright useful at times.
 
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nanZor

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Airband noisy in the 118-135mhz range AM.

With some airband activity up this morning, this setup running solely from the external cellphone pack is not really usable for airband monitoring. Some packs are quieter than others, but still not really usable in this part of the spectrum.

Heh, one would definitely call this an unsupported hack that requires local testing. Most of my FM comms in other parts of the spectrum sound ok, but I *think* I'm hearing a slightly distorted dc supply underneath. Hard to tell, but now I'm looking for problems.

It works, but definitely requires local testing and evaluation, and if it would be worth it to try and use ferrites on the cable if you notice noise in parts of the spectrum you monitor.
 
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