Is it safe to say that most ground wires are marked with a white stripe. If there are two wires and one is striped, it is a sure thing that this one is ground right?


Wings

Are we talking model aircraft wiring or house wiring? If it is DC the best way is to measure it with a multimeter on DC if the meter reads positive then the black wire of the multimeter is your neg wire.
Nothing is a sure thing when it comes to colour codes and wiring especially when a large number of appliances are manufactured overseas where country specific codes rule.

Well, let me explain to you my scenero.

I fried the charger for my field box. I want to fly this weekend. I have a new one on order from Tower but it will not be here till mid next week.

I thought about charging it with jumper cables through my car, but I figured that may be too much current.


So, I want to use my wall charger I have for my aerobird. It is really low current and I think it will do. I just need to know for sure what is positive and what is negitive.

Wings

Greetings,

The charger for your aerobird battery pack doesn't put out enough volts to charge a 12 volt field battery.

Why you just don't use the battery from your car? Take it off and use while in the field.

Nilo

Most wiring is black , black with white stripe, or brown for negative. Best to check with meter if you have one. Some equipment is positive ground you could reverse charge or burn something up if hucked up in reverse.

Ya, I thought about that later. I tried using the charger for my 18 volt black and decker drill battery. I forgot the amperage, put it wasn't all that much, but I think the voltage was too much. I plugged it in and watched with a meter the whole time. It rose fairly quickly, like from 12.66 to 13 in about 20 minutes. I unplugged at that point because I was scared. 20 minutes later it was back down to 12.7.

I may have enough voltage to get by. I guess I could remove my car battery if it comes to that, but I'd rather not.

Will it hurt it to hook up jumper cables to my car and let it run for a few minutes?

Thanks guys,


Matt

If the starter battery is not excessively low... you can jumper it to the car battery and boost its charge. Make the connection with the engine OFF. (and be sure to get + to +... or something will explode)

I hooked up a bannana plug connection in the back of my Suburban and plugged my 7 amp starter battery into that when driving to the field. Worked fine. 30 min drive and the starter battery was fresh every time I flew. (tapped it off the trailer wiring harness which had the RV style plug... which can charge the travel trailer's battery)

most of the time black with white stripe is positive and solid black is neg.

i dont have a field box battery, i always use my jumper cables and power my flight box that way. Actually now, i use a jump pack for a car. Usually we connect about 3 field boxes to the jump pack at the field and we all have power all day.

sean

In electronics black and brown are almost universally grounds. I would be suspect of any wire having a tracer (the stripe). Usually any wire with a tracer is a hot or signal wire. I would suggest you check all wiring with a meter before hooking up unknowns. My field chargers and so on I bought premade wires that just plugged in. I hope this helps in some way.

Mark Shuman