Show us your ham radio installations

I have @brimy311 ditch light brackets and I purchased @ragofabrication extensions.

Here is link.

 

Awesome, thank you!

 

No problems. Watch out for Vampires.....and Cowells on a Saturday.

 

SC-TRD

Thanks!

The bracket is from CBI Offroad. I suspect that it’s just a ditch light bracket that they sell as a single instead of a pair. It is plenty stout. One issue I had was finding an NMO with a long enough throat to pass through the thickness of the bracket. That took some searching, but I found one made by Laird.

 

Post 19 shows how 1 member did it

unless you meant the whole unit and not just the faceplate

 

Well... picking up my new 2020 Platinum on Monday so today I need to pull the Kenwood and everything else out of my 2015 Limited, I'll install the radio in the new truck just like I did on the old Tundra but the Platinum has the tilt/sliding sunroof and my preference is to always pop a hole and install a NMO. So a lot measuring will be made for clearance along thought on how the RF cable will be run to make sure it's clear of any mechanical equipment so I might be radio-less for a week or so and that'll be the first time in 30 years or so. Also considering on installing one of my TM-D700s instead of the TM-V708 only for the fact it's computer programmable. Wish me luck my fellow hamsters for my 65 Y.O. body doesn't twist and tuck like it used to.

 

I am late to the party here, but if you are still looking for a mic clip, here is a really nice one.

https://magneticmic.com/

 

Wish I had a better solution... but this is the best I could come up with for my Kenwood TM281. Its a fairly large radio and there just isnt any nice way to mount it.
Wasnt gonna drill a hole in the roof of a brand new truck... so I used the NMO trunk lip mount on my hood.

 

What about under the drivers seat with Velcro or on a bracket? Then your mic can come out from under the seat between the center console and your seat.

 

That would work if the faceplate was removable and could be mounted in a visible location... but as it is, I need to be able to see the radio to operate it.

 

Ahhhh, ya my bad. My Icom has a detachable faceplate. Sorry for the bad idea.

I think some other members have put it vertically in their center console also. There are pics of this earlier in this thread.

 

Yeah... eventually I will upgrade to the Kenwood dual-band V71... and with that I can detach and relocate the faceplate to a better spot.

 

Is this considered a Ham radio or a CB radio trash talker? Lol Thinking about sticking this in the center console. Any recommendations on a not so blatant antenna?

 

That looks like a 10/12 meter HAM radio. As far as antennas, people use hood magnet mounts, ditch light mounts, middle of the roof mounts, bed rail mounts, etc. as far as the length of the antenna, that is up to the bands you are transmitting on and where you want to put it really.

 

Roger beep AND echo? Most assuredly a CB. I found this at a local CB/Stereo/Alarm installer, maybe something like this would make for a stealth antenna.

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BoZSpb80V7s

 

Ok, glorified CB. Anything with built in Roger Beep and echo is still just another CB. This one snuck in with a single wire jumper blocking the CB freqency range to avoid the FCC type acceptance requirements for CB radios.

 

anyone play with cross band repeat or a mobile digipeater?

 

I cross band repeat with 2 of my mobile radios. I use the Ft 8800 for 2M to 70 cm and vice versa. I use my TYT 9800 for Crossing over to any of the 3 bands from 70 cm and back.

 

Sure!
I do it with Yaesu and Kenwoods all the time but I also have a full duplex cross band repeater that I built for eventnwork that we do where we need to run 2 nets at the same time from the same place but without using can filters for the same band .

 

ok, so what i would like to do is set something up to bounce aprs from my handheld when i'm out for a ride or a hike. i have a yaesu ftm-400 in the truck and the handheld is a ft3d-r.

one option is to use a kantronics kpc-3 tnc box. kantronics does have a tnc to din cable for yaesu but i can't seem to figure out if the ftm-400, or any yaesu, can digipeat. if the 400 cannot digipeat, then i'll pick up an extra 2m to just use as the digipeater.

another option is to put the 400 into crossband repeat mode but there are potential issues. heat build up on the 400, callsign on transmit and disconnection if something goes awry. if i'm out for a ride or a hike, it'd take awhile for me to get back to the truck. also, it seems a few of the repeater stations here in colorado aren't big fans of this. it looks like you can do it if you have prior approval from the repeater owners.

third option is this mobilinkd tnc3 box combined with the aprs.fi app on a phone. my guess is that once cell service drops out this will be a paperweight. need to dig out some more info.

i also came across this article but i'm not really in the mood to get all hacky with linux and raspberry pi...

the tnc box feels like the best option. does anyone know if i can use it with the ftm-400? if i can't, what would be a good radio to pair with it?

 

Have you looked at Byonics?
We use the shit out of his stuff and it just works!
Also the 400 probably would be OK just digipeating I bet much lower stress than voice.
I also have a few kenwood and Alinco rigs with tnc already on board

 

This is my next big project. Get my HAM radio license and figure out how I want to set it up. Just like this Discussion, there's alot of information out there. Definitely alot to take in. Thanks for giving me ideas of what everyone has done.

 

I know this is a base station, but what do you ham guys think about this? Ham or cb, just curious.

 

That is a very spendy CB radio.

 

Same - supposedly an 'amateur' CB radio, but most amateurs don't have $800+ to spend.

 

I’ve seen some photos in here where some of you have put the external speaker in the center dash.

wondering if I’ll have any problems just disconnecting the factory speaker there and running wire to it and use it as my external. I think the stock dash speakers are weird like 6 ohm or something

 

No way to tell other than just trying it?
It is really tough I think to find a decent comms speaker overall so I have little hope that the center speaker would be decent for that either but you never know.

Mine has no speaker there and the grill just snaps out so it should not be to hard to see how it sounds,or to replace it with any known good comms speaker for that matter!

 

Yea good point. I’ll try it but I’ve never seen the need to buy an overpriced ‘ham’ external speaker. It’s just a speaker I could pull one from a 78 Datsun and use it if I had to.
If it sounds like ass I’ll try a different one that fits there

 

I never mentioned any overpriced ham speaker.

I just know from experience that it is not all that common to find any random speaker that sounds good for our radio.

I like the old Motorola speaker and most of the radio shack speakers usually but I never pass on the chance to test any new ones that I find that might be better too.

YMMV clearly.