Greetings all! Just a quick informational post for your reference. I pilfered a fuse from one of my UV-5R battery eliminators, and in the process, broke the leads off the cigarette lighter body. As they weren't the standard Red/Black pairing, I had to take the whole thing apart to make sure I had the right wires. I also used the opportunity to make up a PowerPole Battery Eliminator for base station/data use. Anyway, on to the pics!

Here's the problem child: as you can see, there's 4 different color wires inside the coiled cord, so of course, they used yellow and green. Also note the cord enters the hollow battery case at the center-line.


In order to be 100% sure I had the right terminals going to +/-, I busted another open... and found it to be completely different. Note the cord enters the hollow battery case off to one side in this version, and they've used Red/Black correctly:



And the underside of that PCB in case anybody needs it...




I hope this helps somebody, if for no other reason than a cheap way to run the UV-5R's off shore power with PowerPoles.

Uh, wow.  I'm underwhelmed.  Some real quality work there.

Why bother with a heatsink when there's no airflow? Why not just a solid block of AL?

I've measured over 150'F on those battery eliminators.

Whichever wire is connected to the center pin of the voltage regulator should be your negative.

It was, although I used the wiring of the one with Red/Black to figure it out.

To clarify: this thread wasn't meant to evangelize the UV-5R or any of it's kit, but rather to inform folks about the wiring setup on the eliminators.

Judging by the engineering that went into the design of the DC to DC converter I probably wouldn't base anything off just one eliminator.

It is interesting to see inside it though. Does it get hot in your hand?

1: I used the one with Red/Black going all the way to the radio connection points to I.D. which was +/- as far as the radio body was concerned. While the eliminators may be made differently, they all have to end up the same by the time you get to the connection terminals!

2: I have tested both for 2+ hours on continuous receive (NOAA), and while both were warm to the touch, neither was hot and neither was getting any warmer after the 15 minute mark.