FDM-S3 Power Supply

[Max]

Hi Max,

Great stuff... I think I'm armed with enough info to make a confident decision - you've probably saved me about 50 quid

I'll order one of the better wall-warts and a multimeter today.

Really appreciate you taking the time to help.

73
James

No worries James. Just to add to what Kriss said, linear supplies come in regulated and unregulated. Although the Elad tolerates a wide voltage input, I'd still go for regulated. The unregulated ones can really be many volts higher than the spec when off load. TBH from what I've seen you would be hard pushed to find a sensibly priced linear supply these days anyway.

As we are on the subject of linear supplies, if you want a bomb-proof linear supply to power many pieces of kit, or transceiver if you ever decide to go that route, then you could do a whole lot worse than look out for a used Yaesu FP-1030. They seem to often fetch silly prices but I picked mine up couple years ago for 75 quid. Totally RFI-free and solid as a rock (but with a weight to match of course!). Can have a second use as a door stop!

Max

[jdow]

For a noisy supply get a small rat-tail mains power extension cable. Even a foot long is nice. People use them to create access to all sockets in a plug strip when large wall warts are involved. A large clamp on ferrite beads on that rat tail along with another such ferrite with several turns of your wall wart's 12VDC lead can often tame the wall wart's noise. For RF noise ferrite beads are your best friend.
{^_^}

[jfurness]

Thanks Joanne.. I'll bear that in mind as that may be part of my solution!!!

[jfurness]

So... thank you to those that have helped me on my FDM-S3 journey.

I'm happy to say that, despite my anxieties/lack of confidence I have managed to:

1) Source a decent, relatively cheap 12V, 2A wall-wart.
2) Source a decent cheap multimeter.
3) Snipped the circular end off the wall-wart lead, successfully figuring out which strand is +ve and which is -ve using the multimeter.
4) Connected the wall-wart to the S3's supplied power cable and successfully powered on the S3!

Installing the drivers was fun but that bit I'm a little more confident with

Screenshot-2024-09-27-162321.jpeg (395.41 KiB) Viewed 5987 times

James

[Max]

Good news James. Looks very impressive. I'd like a receiver with that bandwidth for VHF FM but can't really justify it right now.

Now the fun begins, and just in time for the weekend too!

Max