Introduction: Baofeng FB-F9 V2+ Ham Radio Charging Stand Modification

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About: IF YOU ARE IN THE GREATER Colorado Springs AREA AND WANT A NERD PROJECT FRIEND/BUDDY HIT ME UP. I enjoy building projects, coming up with solutions to common everyday issues. Fixing things instead of buyin…

In this Instructable I will be modifying the charging stand of the Baofeng radio. I find that the stand is to light weight, it slides to much, and needs to move less and be more stationary. Join me on the journey to stability :)

Step 1: The Charger Base, Whats Inside

The charger base is a nice charge stand as chargers go, It is however very light weight about 3/4 ounce maybe.

I find it slides around a lot especially on shiny surfaces etc. I decided I wanted to make the base more stable and more "Commercial" quality if you will.

Lets take a look inside:

If you turn the base over you will find 4 small Phillips head screws. Remove these and you will see the inside is fairly hollow with the exception of the small lithium battery charging circuit.

As you can see there is plenty of room where weight can be added to make the base more stable.

Step 2: The Solution for Less Than 50 Cents

I got to thinking of what I could use to weight the base down.

It had to meet some criteria for me in order to use it.

1, It can not become corrosive and destroy the insides of the base over time.

2. It had to be heavy and dense.

3. It had to be environmentally friendly. (NO LEAD) no fishing weights etc.

As you may have seen in my 12 volt drill conversion I used white sugar, this didn't seem practical in spaces this small.

I wanted to find something easy to handle, and cheap, then the idea of pennies came to mind. Pennies don't seem to buy much these days anyway so why not.

Along with three plastic bags to keep them under control they were easy to insert. Given that the pennies are loose they fit and move around as needed.

Remember if you do this, tuck in the plastic bag edges before you tighten the screws :)

Again its simple, easy, cheap and it WORKS! What more could you wish for?

Step 3: How It Weighs In

Just for fun I decided to get my gram/oz scale out and weigh the finished base and see what it actually weighed when I was done.

The base ended up weighing 6.39 oz quite and improvement over perhaps 3/4 oz. This gives the base a lot of stability and solid feeling.

For fun I put the radio on the scale to see how it stacks up for weight as well. The Baofeng FB-F9 V2+ weighs in at 7.7 oz a shade under 1/4 of a pound. With the larger battery it will likely be closer to 1/2 pound.

I couldn't see the original light weight charger being of much use with that heavy of a radio sitting in it, thus the need for modification.

I have plans to further modify the base when I add the larger 3800 mAh battery so stay tuned. This will be a very rugged radio when I am done with it.

Step 4: How Well Does It Work?

As you can see in the pictures above the radio is sitting on about a 45 degree angle. There is nothing holding the radio other than the normal charger grooves that guide and hold the battery against the charge connections.

The weight of the charger base now holds it from falling over. No wind will suddenly tip it over during an emergency deployment, and it won't just slide around on the table or counter where it is set.

I am thinking of adding some small rubber feet or some no slip rubber to the bottom to make it even more stable.

I have even given some consideration as to how I might use this base with a large piece of Velcro in a GO-BOX situation.

Again I hope this Instructable has been helpful and informative.

Please post ideas, suggestions, and comments below. 73 KC8HPS