[AMRadio] BC610 110v using one leg of 220

[Larry Taft]

Brian,
Both wires are hot with the ground as a safety connection.  Check with 
your voltmeter.

By your description do you have a 3 prong 220vac outlet as used for an 
older dryer outlet?  Or an air conditioner?  Any idea as to the wire 
size?  Is the ground wire the same size as the hot wires?  Many older 
220 outlets were wired with say 10 gage for the hot lines and a smaller 
ground wire, say 12 or 14 gage.
The 220 lines in a house are really 110 each side to neutral/ground 
which is the center tap on the pole pig outside your house.  It is poor 
form to use the ground wire as the neutral.  You would have to redo the 
wiring in the circuit breaker panel to get the black hot 110, white 
neutral and green ground.

Modern 220 installations have 4 wires. 2 hots L1 Black,and L2 Red, 
Neutral White and Ground Green.  If you have this setup then either Red 
or Black and White will give you the 110.  Ground is only for safety.

I try to give good advice...some day I'll follow it too.
Larry  K2LT

A.R.S. - W5AMI wrote:
> Trying to get a BC610 going and need to hook to one leg of existing
> 220 outlet, and now I'm just confused to say the least.  The 610E does
> not have any polarity indicators on the 110vac AC chassis plug.  I'm
> using a 3 wire 220 outlet with ground, hot and neutral.  In order to
> get 110, I have to use ground for one side.  Which of the other sides
> do I use in order to also hook up a heavy Earth ground to the 610
> without causing a short?!  I'm assuming the hot (black) wire...
>
> tnx - Brian
>
>