Amateur Radio an your bronco

[VE4DB]

Is there anyone that is a ham radio operator an installed radio's in there bronco? Mine should be in next week an haven't planned how to put radio's in there yet. Was hoping that some ham's had already done this, an to get some ideas. Really don't want to drill holes or do any cutouts. If you've done some radio installs, could you please post some pic's.

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[Major Kong]

You're in luck OP
Upper right corner
Search feature
Type in SWR
Some great threads
Love listening to SW
Too lazy to pursue license
Might change that someday

 

[VE4DB]

Has anyone mounted any HF antennas?

 

[Terry K]

Do a search on ham radio. There are several discussions on that.

 

[DaveInSA]

Has anyone mounted any HF antennas?

I plan on mounting a Yaesu ATAS120 on the rear hatch using a Diamond K400. It's how I had it on my previous vehicle, an Edge. Will also ground all the doors, hood, liftgate, and exhaust.

 

[Major Kong]

Just gonna toss this in
http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901
For those whom may be curious
Big world out there

 

[VE4DB]

I plan on mounting a Yaesu ATAS120 on the rear hatch using a Diamond K400. It's how I had it on my previous vehicle, an Edge. Will also ground all the doors, hood, liftgate, and exhaust.

Awesome, i was thinking also making a bracket at the back hatch for an Hf antenna. wish i would of kept my atas 120. I parked my semi an took most of the gear out of there. not sure how i can make a mount for a high-Q? that would be strong enough. might have to go back to ham-sticks for awhile. an a dual band on the other side.
when you get yours set up could you please get a couple pictures.

 

[NavyBOFH]

I’m still stalling on mine - but I bought a Ditch Light bracket kit for the hood and widened one of them out to a 3/4” hole. Then used a thick-mount NMO kit and a Comet “SAR” antenna.

Inside the vehicle is where I still need to plan. The antenna will be split by a Sti-Co multicoupler, but the Comet/Diamond ones work well too for this case. Inside will be two Motorola XTL5000s, one on VHF and one on UHF to a single W3 handheld control head.

So I still need to find space for two radio decks, two speakers, a bunch of cabling… all without being shoddy or taking up trunk space or such. My immediate answer to myself is putting them under the rear seat in a way that I can still access them via the trunk for programming but I haven’t gotten that far.

Ham stuff should be a good bit easier to work with since you have a single RF deck, single control head, and everything I’ve seen from the ham world can be run remotely via CAT5 cable which makes a cleaner run. If I wasn’t committed to using P25 and encryption for some non-ham stuff I’d go with something like the Connect Systems CS800D and tuck the head in the cubby under the HVAC controls.

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