Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

No I don’t sorry. I used a soche magnet mount.

 

I had mine there for a little while until I got tired of looking up. Now I have it mounted to a small piece of stainless that slips under the heater controls panel.

 

Can't begin to tell you how many NMO's I have seen ripped out of roofs particularly with dual bands. Mine are all mounted on the bed rail I live in Maine nothing is real close they work fine. Don't stress over ground planes it real does not have that much effect.

 

Hmmmm. Got a pic of it?

 

As used:


The Magic Mount:

 

I will keep that in mind.

 

I just pop riveted the bracket to the stainless (which was originally a switch plate before I cut it up).

 

Just got a perfect score on my technicians test. Now have to wait for the FCC to re-open so I can get to learning. Then on to a vehicle setup after I know enough to utilize it effectively.

 

Still not better, but also not any worse. Should be about the same. For VHF / UHF you don't need to ground the cap. For HF, grounding the cap will make you more effective. It's never a bad idea.

 

hmm. seems my best bet then is NMO in the roof with a dual band, and a 2m Jpole for putting in a tree if i cant reach with reasonable power.

 

This was a good suggestion. More power does suprisingly little to help. Antenna and antenna height are usually much more dramatic improvements then adding any amount of power.

I really like the Ed Fong DBJ-2. A standard 2m slim jim will also work well on both bands.

 

Jpoles work well and can be hung from a branch to give you some height. They have modest gain and are very rugged. I'm from MD never rallied down there but I owned two foreign repair shops. I work with the SCCA and the VSCA from Lime Rock to the Maine pro woods rally. Depending what hat I'm wearing that day I either coms or a marshall We do Mt Equinox and the Mt Washington hill climbs also. I have used a base station antenna in the hills for the Maine Rally one stage of the rally is the longest stage in the pro rally circuit.

 

I just bought myself one of these FT-7900R/E units for my Go Box radio. I needed one that would do Winlink reliably and this one does it just fine.

 

There is some chance of that with very tall and rigid antennas. Those are usually the Comet and Diamond ones, which weren't really designed to mount on a sheet metal NMO. Using an NMO in your roof and commercial antennas from Larsen and Laird don't pose any real risk of that. Otherwise you'd see fire department, ranger, municipal vehicles tearing them out and that doesn't happen. There's nothing we're going to do to our trucks that's 1/10th as tough as what a cop car is going see.

That's not true. Not in theory, not in application.

 

I use plain old

$31 Larsen NMO-K 3/4'' Permanent Hole Mount with 17' RG58A/U Cable and UHF Male PL259 Connector

Larsen NMO-K mounts. If you're mounting it in sheet metal it will seal fine, that's what they are designed for. I ran these two antennas for 11 years in the old truck with zero issues. They are still going now 4 years on, I sold the truck to a friend who uses it for landscape work.



If you're mounting them on a bracket exposed just silicone the under side after you mount it. No reason to overthink it. Eventually I'll drop the headliner in the Tacoma and mount antennas in the roof. It's just more of a PITA than it was in my '91 and I haven't had time.

 

Alright, thoughts and opinions. I want to update my APRS/radios -- I am looking at the Kenwood TM-D710GA as it has gps built right in. I would like to use that, but I would also like to have a map overlay if possible. I thought about getting a mobilinkd system and picking up a decent HT with GPS, then connecting it to a tablet. What are peoples thoughts? With APRS running on the D710 it basically uses one while band, but I don't really think I NEED true dual-band all the time....right? What are people doing in regards to similar systems?

 

An NMO is pretty easy to rip out there are only two small points of contact and they do not extend into the surround metal very far the thinner the roof the worse it gets. You may notice most cop cars have their antennas on the trunk. Do as you wish the newer 3/8 type NMO have a much better purchase to the inside of the roof. Best one I have ever seen was an antenna that caught a ice storm damaged phone line in the twist of the antenna ripped the antenna out of the roof and when the coax pulled tight it snapped the entire head liner out and on the drivers head.

 

I have the 710G connected to the Mobilinkd, and BT to my tablet running APRSDroid. Set B side to APRS, and talk on A side.


You'll need the Mobilinkd and these cords to connect it to the 710G You get full functionality of the APRSDroid app. It controls the xmit, and can act as a digipeater to aprs.fi if it's on your cell account.

 

Awesome info. Thanks for the help, looks like what I'll be doing then.

 

No Problem. It works great! I have a .pdf on how-to set it up. Settings for radio and TNC and such. I can send it to you if you need it.