hi folks,

this is the second time i've posted this, for some weird reason it
didn't post the first time ... i waited pretty much all day to see if
it showed up to avoid posting the same thing twice, but i'm tired of
waiting i need answers.

--
having trouble with my icom ic-706-mkiig and ah-4. i think it's
working ok, in general, i have it all hooked up like i understand it
should be. i'm using a whip antenna on the truck at the moment and it
is hooked up to the tuner and that to the radio. the whip is one of
those hamstick types that says it was for either 20m or 40m, i forget.
anyway, i tune the radio to about 3.6mhz and hit the tune button and
the tuner makes all kinds of scary sounding noises, and then the tuner
button lights up red and stays lit. i understand that this is good,
that it means it tuned ok. then i go up to a higher frequency and try
the same thing and at some point in the bands, say around 10mhz lets
call it, things stop working right. at lets say 10mhz (it might be
higher or lower) i hit the tune button and i get the same scary type of
sounds out of the tuner and the red light on the radio is flashing
while it tries to tune, then suddenly .... the radio just turns off!!
what is going on ? it happens reliably, anytime i try to tune above a
certain frequency the radio shuts itself off and i have to turn it back
on to continue using it.

any ideas what is going on ? i thought if it couldn't tune an antenna
it just sits there with the light off and the radio bypasses the tuner.
and is all this noise normal from the tuner, is it supposed to be
making all this racket ? it sounds like mechanical relays switching or
something, like a crackling electro-mechanical type of a sound. i've
never seen a tuner used before, so it could just be normal .. and my
problems are probably just user error!

finally, something bad happened too. out of the back of my radio and
my cb i have an external speaker connection that goes to an amplifier
through some various things that massage the signal into something
useful. anyway, that has all been working great, i have a subwoofer
hooked up to it, etc, and it's all wired up through a good sized
amplifier. well, something bad happened when i hit the tune button on
the radio ... a few times i heard a loud "thump" in my speaker system,
which i didn't think much of really because that happens even when i
turn the ignition on and off sometimes. but then suddenly the
amplifier stopped working when i hit the tune button. i wonder what
happened ? i don't seem to have burned up any fuses, i think i may
have actually damaged it!! but it doesn't seem to be hooked up wrong,
all the wires look right to me. maybe the antenna tuner put some kind
of a spike into my batteries through the radio and that got to my
amplifier somehow ? they are all using the same deep cycle battery
system.

any help greatly appreciated, or pointers to help. i'm going to call
icom during business hours and see what they say about it. i could
also call the store where i got all the stuff but i don't know how much
help they are going to be ... i'll try that though.

[snip all the stuff i wrote about ah-4/icom 706 problem]

problem solved. the ground for the ah-4 wasn't good enough, so i moved
it to a thicker cable and ran it directly to the chassis instead of
going the extra 12 inches to the shared ground that went directly to
the chassis. i was worried about ground loops, and still am, but it's
working much better with a fat 2 inch wide braided strap going to the
chassis.

but that didn't fix it completely ... the final answer was to put
ferrite beads on each end of the control cable that goes between the
remote display and the radio itself. the control cable was picking up
rf from the tuner and that was making the radio cut off, the beads
fixed it.

so thanks everyone for all your help (**snickers** nobody even answered
my post!)