Dual alternator setup?

[Rawze]

here is an old post that i did about big power back on TTR several years ago before they kicked me off the place...

the question was "what angle is best to offset your CB antenna?"...

Rawze Wrote:Back before there were cell-phones, texting, and the internet, there was radio...

So much information from back then has gotten lost, making me feel like a dinosaur in comparison. I try to stay out of the cb forums because I am not much for posting something, then having a slew of these 'New Guys', or perhaps 'Older Guys' that may have gotten their view of things twisted over the years argue and pick apart my antiquated skills of yesteryear. I will say this though,...I used to be one HECK of a contest box and radio builder for the channel-6 'Ten Gallon Hat' club. I have witnessed those 102' steel whips pop like fuses under such power, and have seen nearby giant oak trees burst into flames as if gasoline were poured onto them. It was funny to 'PoP The Mike' at a traffic light and watch it change, confusing the snot out of folks, or better yet, watch the smoke roll out from the guy's car stereo next to you, killing his 'Boom Boom', and his engine. Back then, a cobra-148 with a decent antenna, nominal was 10-15 miles barefoot, and 30 miles on an open stretch when it was quiet...

That being cleared up, perhaps a bedtime story is in order...

I remember well, why truckers leaned their antenna's forward instead of straight up, and myself, building contest boxes and radio's, spent many many hours fine tuning a contest setup just before a competiton. I guess I was reminded of all of it, when posting in another forum about alternators. It was mostly done because the stacks on each side of the truck would interfere with the impedance of the antenna, causing the SWR to bounce up and down as the antenna waved back and forth. Someone 10+ miles away would complain you were fading in and out rapidly. A fibreglass whip standing straight up would lean right back toward the stack at 70+MPH. Most drivers would lean them forward just enough so that they would stand back straight up while going their 'cruising speed'. Of coarse, most trucks back then were ungoverned, so if you saw a KW with the 'Whips' leaning pretty far forward, it was a sign of someone running 'triple digits' out west. It didn't take long before leaning your antennas further forward became a symbol of how fast your truck would go, and guys used to stick 'LED's' at the tip of their whips to prove they could make them stand straight up at night by going super fast. Well,...Like with anything else competitive, guys would lean them further and further forward, but as more trucks started being governed, the initial reason slowly got lost and gave way to just simply style and/or looks. Many would use the excuse of 'Oh, it gets out better', rather than admit their truck was a slow-poke. Personally, I get a giggle out of all the trucks with their antennas pointed at 45 degrees for no other functional purpose other than not wanting to feel inferior because that's what everyone else has done. The general excuse these days has become something like 'Must be Somthin' To it Cause Every one Else Does It'. Well,..the correct answer from an ex-master contest station builder is both Yes and No.

Its very difficult to see the subtle differences in antenna position on a big-truck (this does NOT apply to 4-wheelers or small vans) at 5, 10, 50, or even 500 watts of power, but push a carrier of 15 kilowatts with a PeP of more than 32,000 and the slightest nuance of imbalance can send that 3.5 million volts of electricity somewhere you don't want it to be. It used to be rather hilarious (trying not to laugh.LOL) back then to have a driver with a 10+ kilowatt box he set up himself come in to my shop and proclaim every time he keyed his mic, his poo-hole would burn as if there were hot sauce on it.....:ROFL: :biggrin_25523::biggrin_25523::biggrin_25523:.....Yup this actually used to happen.

Anyways, After many many trucks and hours of tweaking this kind of power, I figured out that on a big truck, stacks or not, standing still, the absolute 'Q' (sweet spot of perfection) was almost always exactly 23 degrees forward of straight up within 1 degree off the mirors. The actual reason for all the tech-savvy geeks reading this, revealed by all that power, is that the antennas are not exactly centered within the 'ground plane' effect of the truck. The baloon of inductive reactance vs capacitive reactance is offset toward the direction of greatest metal surface in reference to the antenna (IE. the back), so leaning the antenna forward slightly brings what metal there is in the front closer to the tip, where the effect is greatest. It is not a complete balance from front to back by any means, but helps quite a bit. As handlebar kindly put it, the further from straight up, the more the polarization of the signal is skewed. 23 degrees is the 'Q' because anything past that point and polarization loss starts to overcome the gain from balancing the 'Ground Plane'.

Conclusion,...Whatever angle forward that is required to achieve 23 degrees while going down the road.


Maybe my bedtime story was entertaining,...Rawze

of course, some complete moron had to then jump in and put his internet rambo-ism onto what i posted who was absolutely clueless, claiming all sorts of scientific nonsense, trying to discredit my post. guess he wanted to profess to the world how much of an idiot he was because he was not even a stain in his daddys pants back in those days, and an argument ensued... gotta love those morons and their know-it-all attitudes.

My final reply was ...

Rawze Wrote:thats exactly why I do not post in these forums, too many know-it-alls that have no idea how to fathom such things, so this will be my last post in here. I am not your teacher, and it is obvious that most would kill themselves or render their private parts inert from trying.

it is obvious that you have no clue as to what went on back then, so I will clarify a bit so you can go off yourself trying it out. How about 6 250-amp leese-neville alternators gutted. They provide raw 3-phase a/c. All of them connected in parallel fed into a custom built 3-phase xfmr (southern trabsformer built them for us), upping it to 875KV. push that into a single 1608 through a quadrupler = 3.5 million on the plate, and only 150-watts drive will push 25-32KW out of the box on a bird wattmeter.

BTW, your kindergarden math has a serious flaw as well. The feedpoint of any decent antenna is almost all current, but as the energy travels upward along the element, it is converted back into almost all pure voltage by the time it reaches the tip. If the antenna is designed well, then that voltage can be infinitely high. So YES, try having a couple three million volts dance through the truck at 27 MHZ, and you will feel like someone stuffed you into a microwave oven, it on high.

There is no reason to pick apart an old-mans words to prove yourself or to gain attention to yourself. After-all it WAS just a bedtime story.

(I suppose next, some joker in here will proclaim that 39 kilowatts DC @ 1.3-1.5MV is not possible from only 6 alternators, witch is of coarse easily done as well)

of course, reasoning with trolls and idiots is pointless, so I let them have at it after that.



--- point is ... Yeah, people used to put multiple alternators on their vehicles fairly often back in those days.

[Waterloo]

I found this video, rather technical, but very informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxMGPhNASl4

I cannot imagine taking that amp to clip, I think something is not right in your setup. Where are your gains set? And the crossover? How about the head unit? Line levels? Are you running the crossover from the head or using the amps built in crossover?

I would figure that out first...

As far as powering the system, give us a break down of what you are running. Any other amps in the system? Speakers? What brand sub? Cabling?

I'm running oversized 1-0 AWG copper strand welding cable into the cab/house battery and up to the amps. The Alpine S series class D amps are fed with 4 AWG copper off of the 1-0 AWG. Speaker cable is all 12 AWG copper.

The sub, which is under my bunk is a RE SXX 1200 watt 10" dual voice coil @ 2 ohm, in a custom double baffle ported box, as large as I could go due to size limitations. The amps are all bridged to get maximum output to the speakers. I have three sets of Alpine R series speakers, one set are component up in the door, tweeters are mounted in the dash.

Line voltages from the HU to the amps are running at 4 volts. The battery isolator protecting the X2Power Deep Cycle Group 31 AGM battery is rated at 500 amps. There is an inline fuse in the battery box, and up in my wall that is accessible but not seen.

I bought the longest twisted pair interconnects I could find, and ran those as to isolate them from any electronics/wiring in the cab. Everything is ran through a dedicated fuse panel, and direct wired, trying to keep as much as possible off of the actual cab circuitry.

I was having issues with the little Alpine mono amp, so I removed that from the system, it is now just a dummy up on the wall. After say two hours, she would get hot pushing that RE sub and go into protect, not clip, protect mode. So, I pulled the old Polk PDA 1000.1 out of retirement and have had no issues. I thought I would gamble with the little Alpine Mono amp, and of course it did what I thought it would, oh well...

I'm thinking something is not right in your setup, these class D amps are very efficient and not the energy hogs that the old class A/B amps are. The reason I went Class D in the truck and did my best to stay away from the larger A/B Mosfett amps. That X2Power Marine Deep Cycle Group 31 house battery keeps everything stable.

Give us a breakdown of the system of yours. Settings too, you should not be clipping that amp.

[tree98]

Rawze Wrote:every time he keyed his mic, his poo-hole would burn as if there were hot sauce on it.

That is damn funny, I laughed pretty good at that.

[Rawze]

(06-19-2020 )tree98 Wrote:  

Rawze Wrote:every time he keyed his mic, his poo-hole would burn as if there were hot sauce on it.

That is damn funny, I laughed pretty good at that.

first time someone came to me and said their system was doing that to them, I could not stop laughing for about 10 minutes... I did not believe them, so I went out to their truck and keyed the mic myself ... needless to say, I let go of it pretty quickly!!!... Felt just like someone put a cigarette lighter directly on my bu#t-hole!!! == I am not kidding!.

I jumped out of there quick!-- and my wife at the time was about to pi#$$ herself laughing so hard!!!

The guy was pushing every bit of 30+ killowatts though, so it is understandable.

-- That was one hell of a serious grounding issue I had to fix for him.

[Volvo8873]

That was a good post Rawze, I actually had some coffee running down my chin reading that! LOL

[BIASRacing]

(06-19-2020 )Waterloo Wrote:  I found this video, rather technical, but very informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxMGPhNASl4
.

Nice setup looks like a prostar midroof?. Visions or grandeur..."ive been thinking aboit replacing the cap. Flat top with sunroof.

But yes, setup wise pioneer head unit, powering (2 american bass compression tweeters, and two american bass 6.5 neos)

2/0 OFC to a distro block, then to the amp. The amp is a taramps smart 3k currently at 1 ohm.

Cross over points set on the amp and again on the head unit for redundancy.

Yes its a ground issue somewhere, I grounded my rca jacks which helped, but i can still hear the signal lights through the sub some at very low volume.

Also, with radio off and running other necessities, the voltage still drops. So perhaps just a more capable alternator, and maybe fresh batteries will do the trick.

[Waterloo]

Yep, batteries and the alternator... How about your cable and grounds from the battery box? I had to replace all of mine a few years ago on my 08. I had cable with, in one case, nearly a foot of copper exposed to the elements at the starter, there was no jacket on it! The truck came from the factory like this! I reinstalled over 100 feet of power and ground cabling. That cured many issues I was having with the truck. May want to inspect those cables.

My stereo system, that I grounded to the sleeper cab with one of those fancy JL Audio ground lugs, you can use a stainless nut and bolt to do the same. I installed that ground behind the driver seat in the closet cabinet, right where the cab makes that turn to go into the driver compartment. I also ran a 2/0 AWG cable in at the same location to power the amps from the battery box. I have a group 31 dual deep cycle battery in there too hooked to a 500 amp battery isolator, it is tripped with the ignition.

I attempted to ground in other locations in the cab and sleeper and was getting noise or no ground.

What I did to eliminate noise, was to install Blue Sea fuse panels in the cab and sleeper. They are fed power with an 8 gauge cable. I used these and wired directly to the batteries. https://amzn.to/2C6yOwo
I turn everything on/off with these remotes. https://amzn.to/2NUdnkR
No noise...

And I am upgrading my alternator too, I just picked up a Delco 40si 300 amp unit, will hopefully install today along with new 1/0 cable. I'm leaving the original factory cable in place and running a second line directly to the battery box.

I don't really have any issues with the old alternator 165 amp unit, other than it is to small for the draw I have on the electrical system. This is something I have been wanting to do for some time, and with all new fresh batteries in the truck, I figured now is the time.

[JimT]

(07-05-2020 )Waterloo Wrote:  What I did to eliminate noise, was to install Blue Sea fuse panels in the cab and sleeper. They are fed power with an 8 gauge cable. I used these and wired directly to the batteries. https://www.jjkeller.com/shop/Product/J-...-Form-2290

JJ-Keller sells Blue Sea fuse panels?

[Waterloo]

(07-05-2020 )JimT Wrote:  

(07-05-2020 )Waterloo Wrote:  What I did to eliminate noise, was to install Blue Sea fuse panels in the cab and sleeper. They are fed power with an 8 gauge cable. I used these and wired directly to the batteries. https://www.jjkeller.com/shop/Product/J-...-Form-2290

JJ-Keller sells Blue Sea fuse panels?

LOL! Stupid computer... https://amzn.to/2BETgoa
I fixed it... ;-)