Radio for floating the river

[redfish23]

Im going to build a radio to take on the Frio river. I want to try and run a cheap marine stero off of deer feeder batteries. Anyone know how many amps a AM/FM CD player pulls? Going to be putting everything inside a Pelican watertight box and mounthing some small speakers on the outside. Let me know what you think.

[gordaflatsstalker]

Go buy a a cheap cooler, cheap cd player, and some cheap marine speakers. Put the cd player inside the cooler with a 12v battery and mount the speakers on the outside.

[redfish23]

Well I used to have a cooler with radio in it and it is kind of hard to lug that around with the drink cooler and kids. I want to make something a little nicer that can ride with the drink cooler, to elimenate an extra tube.

[TX CHICKEN]

I would go with an MP3 player and run it through a cheap amp then to the speakers. My buddy did one this way and it works great. A CD player uses from 3-10 amps and a small amplifier by itself will use about the same if I remember correctly. If you don't need it loud might not even need the amp.

[berto]

i have a pic of mine somewhere. ill post it when i find it.

[MarshJr.]

heres a pic of mine
it has a marine boat battery, 2 chnl amp and 4 marine boss speakers....it is loud and lasts all day

[fishinfool]

i bought a small cd player radio am/fm small thing from best buy (like $20) put 4 small eye bolts in the lid of a cooler and used 4 bungy cords to hold it down. as long as you can keep it mostly dry it works great, drinks were in the same cooler.

[1hunglower]

We have over $600 in ours. Its in 120 qrt ice chest with a wheel chair battery, amp, 2 woofers, and 2 marine speakers,10 disk CD changer and I-pod. On top we have a super duper solar panel that is used in oilfied that will charge in moon light. The problem with the I-Pod is that everybody wants to hear something different, so we find it easier to take a laptop to the house and let everyone pick 10 songs and burn a couple of CD's. The problem we have is our amp gets to hot and will quit for awhile, we are talking about mounting a small fan inside the icechest. We are leaving Mon the 15 for a week, we put in at 7 bluffs and float to comanche crossing.

[oldriver88]

I took a rolling cooler and put some speakers (2-6X9's, 2-3"), a car battery, an amp, and also a solar panel w/ a charge controller. It lasts all weekend long and charges back up during the day!! We also just use an MP3 player, no radio. The MP3 player has a FM radio on it also. (Sansa clip 2gb, Best Buy 40$) I have no more than $200 in the whole thing, and one person can carry it.

[Tankfxr]

I have a small 2speaker contraption that takes 4 AA's that i got from office depot or something like that. Im thinking about coming up with something for that and my mp3 player. That pic earlier was one heck of a set up.

[berto]

heres min, the cd player plays mp3, sat radio, and i pod conection. 4 marine sony speakers. optima battery will play hrs on end without dieing. i used it 3 days and it didnt need to be recharged. not bad for a spur of the momunt build. gonna build something differnet when i can think of a design that will allow a sub without going with a 120ct icechest. i have a good idea how, just need to do it.

[longhorns13]

We have over $600 in ours. Its in 120 qrt ice chest with a wheel chair battery, amp, 2 woofers, and 2 marine speakers,10 disk CD changer and I-pod. On top we have a super duper solar panel that is used in oilfied that will charge in moon light. The problem with the I-Pod is that everybody wants to hear something different, so we find it easier to take a laptop to the house and let everyone pick 10 songs and burn a couple of CD's. The problem we have is our amp gets to hot and will quit for awhile, we are talking about mounting a small fan inside the icechest. We are leaving Mon the 15 for a week, we put in at 7 bluffs and float to comanche crossing.


I love that float from 7 bluffs to comanche crossing. Also can sit in the river at comanche crossing, not far from the Shangri-La!

[Parafirediesel]

I will take some pics of my Ice chest and post them on here. I have a 48qt with two speakers and a cd/mp3/usb marine fm/am radio. I have it installed in 1/4 of the box and boxed in with vinyl coated wood. Below the radio is a small marine deep cylce battery. The antenna is on the back as well as a trailer plug outlet. When I want to use my cooler in the garage/camp site/or off my trucks trailer light plug, I flip a switch inside and plug a cord into the trailer light inlet and run off my wall outlet or my truck trailer lights (the cord has a adaptor on the end for attaching the AC plug to). On the same cord I have two alligator clamps that you can attach to the battery charger so you can recharge your battery without having to take it out. Then if I want to float the river or take it out with my boat I just flip the switch putting it back on battery power and Im good to go. The beauty of my setup is of course its versatilty and also the fact that It still has 3/4 of the ice chest for drinks. (It will hold up to about 16 cans with enough ice to keep them nice and cold, it can hold more but they wont be as Ice cold)