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- #21
sorry, I haven't run across it yet.
Ham Radio Operators...
- Thread starter carlfs3
- Start date
I use a backpack setup and a mag mount on the roof. Being a property manager in the middle Tn. Area, I have been known to take the back pack and mag mount up on some tall buildings and make some great contacts 100 plus miles away on 2 meters. Backpack carries a Yaesu FT-2900 and a 30 amp hour Bioenno battery. Mag mount is a 20 dollar tram 1/4 wave mag mount that’s been reliable since 2019. have never used a permanently installed setup.
Looks like it is 55405-60650? (#6 in the image).
Seems you can't buy just the cover plate, you have to buy the entire lower frame assembly (all of #6)
I am thinking about putting a faceplate in this location also, and am considering using magnets.
The drawback of this location is that if the radio faceplate and mount is not very thick, it seems like the screen might end up being kind of hidden under the protrusion for the AC controls if you are looking down at it. I was looking down at the location today and felt like if there was a screen there it might be kind of annoying to easily see.
I already have a Kenwood V71A, the faceplate with the mount is much thicker than the IC-2730a. So I might try mounting that rig first before going the IC-2730 route since it seems like it may not be obscured as much.
I finally set out to install a IC-2730A in my 1958. I put it in the same place discussed earlier.
I figured out that you can easily pass a FLAT 6 conductor RJ-12 cable trough the switch blanks on the panel that pops out. I had a few of these laying around. This is for the control head:
I attached the MB-5 mounting plate for the Icom with velcro, we'll see how long that holds.
If you place the cable correctly, the jack for the cable on the control head lines right up with where the RJ-12 pokes out of the panel:
The radio brick is under the passenger seat. The control cable runs down the passenger side of the center console and along to where it can be run under the seat. The sides of the console near the dash pop off pretty easily. This video has a lot of examples of trim removal.
The 12 gauge power cable runs under trim to the back where the battery is. Didn't take long to do that at all.
For the Antenna, I ordered a set of ditch light brackets from @MandRautomotive and drilled a NMO-size hole (3/4") for a Larsen NMO mount. This bracket replaces the flat black trim next to the Cowl. M&R has a video on youtube that describes how to install these brackets.
I figured out that there would be enough clearance most likely for an NMO mount underneath the ditch light bracket when installed, especially with a spacer. So I took a bit of a chance.
I drilled a 3/4" hole for the NMO mount with a step bit. I was just under 1/8 inch off where I actually needed to be, but it turned out to be close enough.
Anyway, the coax runs out the back of the bracket like you see in the above photo- and there is just enough room to route it underneath the hood from the rear. I soldered a ground wire to the base of the NMO mount since the ditch light bracket is coated and would make for a crappy ground point. There is a very handy existing ground bolt attached to the body close by that I loosened a bit and attached the ground wire (green) to with a spade lug. (And coated with conductive penetrox)
The underside of the NMO mount is protected form the weather with coax seal.
The coax runs through the grommet in the back of this photo and it zip-tied to that loom you see running from the cowl. I punched out the middle of the grommet and ran the coax through it.... Slowly, it was tight.
The coax comes in behind the dash. All you really need to pull off is the piece under the passenger side dash that covers the fuse box etc. below the glove box. The coax is run underneath the door sill trim. Here is a photo taken from the floorboard looking up.
Here's what the antenna install looks like fastened-up. Antenna is a older Diamond NR73B:
I have drilled several holes in cars for antennas (been a Ham over 30 years) but couldn't bring myself to do it on my Land Crusher. I have a Gen 2 Tacoma with 3 NMO holes in it.
Anyways I don't like lip mounts or mag mounts, and didn't want to run the coax under the lift gate weather seal or something like that. So I figured my best bet was to mount near the fender somehow and run the coax through the factory holes in the firewall plugged up by those grommets. I started looking at ditch light brackets, because that is the obvious place to mount an antenna near the fender on this vehicle. There are a few other fabricators making light brackets that go in the same place, but I went with M&R because the design was simpler and looked closer to stock.
To Do:
Get a Black M6 bolt for the ditch light bracket, it came with a stainless one and looks a bit off. Will also add a black washer to the bolt holding the bracket on to help keep the weather out better.
I figured out that you can easily pass a FLAT 6 conductor RJ-12 cable trough the switch blanks on the panel that pops out. I had a few of these laying around. This is for the control head:
I attached the MB-5 mounting plate for the Icom with velcro, we'll see how long that holds.
If you place the cable correctly, the jack for the cable on the control head lines right up with where the RJ-12 pokes out of the panel:
The radio brick is under the passenger seat. The control cable runs down the passenger side of the center console and along to where it can be run under the seat. The sides of the console near the dash pop off pretty easily. This video has a lot of examples of trim removal.
The 12 gauge power cable runs under trim to the back where the battery is. Didn't take long to do that at all.
For the Antenna, I ordered a set of ditch light brackets from @MandRautomotive and drilled a NMO-size hole (3/4") for a Larsen NMO mount. This bracket replaces the flat black trim next to the Cowl. M&R has a video on youtube that describes how to install these brackets.
I figured out that there would be enough clearance most likely for an NMO mount underneath the ditch light bracket when installed, especially with a spacer. So I took a bit of a chance.
I drilled a 3/4" hole for the NMO mount with a step bit. I was just under 1/8 inch off where I actually needed to be, but it turned out to be close enough.
Anyway, the coax runs out the back of the bracket like you see in the above photo- and there is just enough room to route it underneath the hood from the rear. I soldered a ground wire to the base of the NMO mount since the ditch light bracket is coated and would make for a crappy ground point. There is a very handy existing ground bolt attached to the body close by that I loosened a bit and attached the ground wire (green) to with a spade lug. (And coated with conductive penetrox)
The underside of the NMO mount is protected form the weather with coax seal.
The coax runs through the grommet in the back of this photo and it zip-tied to that loom you see running from the cowl. I punched out the middle of the grommet and ran the coax through it.... Slowly, it was tight.
The coax comes in behind the dash. All you really need to pull off is the piece under the passenger side dash that covers the fuse box etc. below the glove box. The coax is run underneath the door sill trim. Here is a photo taken from the floorboard looking up.
Here's what the antenna install looks like fastened-up. Antenna is a older Diamond NR73B:
I have drilled several holes in cars for antennas (been a Ham over 30 years) but couldn't bring myself to do it on my Land Crusher. I have a Gen 2 Tacoma with 3 NMO holes in it.
Anyways I don't like lip mounts or mag mounts, and didn't want to run the coax under the lift gate weather seal or something like that. So I figured my best bet was to mount near the fender somehow and run the coax through the factory holes in the firewall plugged up by those grommets. I started looking at ditch light brackets, because that is the obvious place to mount an antenna near the fender on this vehicle. There are a few other fabricators making light brackets that go in the same place, but I went with M&R because the design was simpler and looked closer to stock.
To Do:
Get a Black M6 bolt for the ditch light bracket, it came with a stainless one and looks a bit off. Will also add a black washer to the bolt holding the bracket on to help keep the weather out better.
Attachments
This is likely not the right thread to ask in, but since you got that cover plate off, can you tell me how? I couldn't figure it out.I finally set out to install a IC-2730A in my 1958. I put it in the same place discussed earlier.
I figured out that you can easily pass a FLAT 6 conductor RJ-12 cable trough the switch blanks on the panel that pops out. I had a few of these laying around. This is for the control head:
View attachment 28852
I attached the MB-5 mounting plate for the Icom with velcro, we'll see how long that holds.
View attachment 28853
If you place the cable correctly, the jack for the cable on the control head lines right up with where the RJ-12 pokes out of the panel:
View attachment 28854
The radio brick is under the passenger seat. The control cable runs down the passenger side of the center console and along to where it can be run under the seat. The sides of the console near the dash pop off pretty easily. This video has a lot of examples of trim removal.
The 12 gauge power cable runs under trim to the back where the battery is. Didn't take long to do that at all.
For the Antenna, I ordered a set of ditch light brackets from @MandRautomotive and drilled a NMO-size hole (3/4") for a Larsen NMO mount. This bracket replaces the flat black trim next to the Cowl. M&R has a video on youtube that describes how to install these brackets.
I figured out that there would be enough clearance most likely for an NMO mount underneath the ditch light bracket when installed, especially with a spacer. So I took a bit of a chance.
View attachment 28855
I drilled a 3/4" hole for the NMO mount with a step bit. I was just under 1/8 inch off where I actually needed to be, but it turned out to be close enough.
View attachment 28856
Anyway, the coax runs out the back of the bracket like you see in the above photo- and there is just enough room to route it underneath the hood from the rear. I soldered a ground wire to the base of the NMO mount since the ditch light bracket is coated and would make for a crappy ground point. There is a very handy existing ground bolt attached to the body close by that I loosened a bit and attached the ground wire (green) to with a spade lug. (And coated with conductive penetrox)
The underside of the NMO mount is protected form the weather with coax seal.
View attachment 28857
The coax runs through the grommet in the back of this photo and it zip-tied to that loom you see running from the cowl. I punched out the middle of the grommet and ran the coax through it.... Slowly, it was tight.
View attachment 28858
The coax comes in behind the dash. All you really need to pull off is the piece under the passenger side dash that covers the fuse box etc. below the glove box. The coax is run underneath the door sill trim. Here is a photo taken from the floorboard looking up.
View attachment 28902
Here's what the antenna install looks like fastened-up. Antenna is a older Diamond NR73B:
View attachment 28859
View attachment 28860
I have drilled several holes in cars for antennas (been a Ham over 30 years) but couldn't bring myself to do it on my Land Crusher. I have a Gen 2 Tacoma with 3 NMO holes in it.
Anyways I don't like lip mounts or mag mounts, and didn't want to run the coax under the lift gate weather seal or something like that. So I figured my best bet was to mount near the fender somehow and run the coax through the factory holes in the firewall plugged up by those grommets. I started looking at ditch light brackets, because that is the obvious place to mount an antenna near the fender on this vehicle. There are a few other fabricators making light brackets that go in the same place, but I went with M&R because the design was simpler and looked closer to stock.
To Do:
Get a Black M6 bolt for the ditch light bracket, it came with a stainless one and looks a bit off. Will also add a black washer to the bolt holding the bracket on to help keep the weather out better.
It comes off by working a thin curved trim tool into the gap at each end and gently prying. I think I worked one side out a bit then worked on the other side.
Fantastic, thanks for the pics. I'll give it a shot.
Don't forget about the inverter in the back of the vehicle if your doing to set up for remote operation. I have not tried mine yet but intend to soon.
If your running a remote station there are tons of antenna options way better than a mobile set up.
Battery boxes with 12vdc sources work well for remote stations also.
If its a drive and gab thing, well carry on, good buddy.
From Grid Square- CM98KH.
If your running a remote station there are tons of antenna options way better than a mobile set up.
Battery boxes with 12vdc sources work well for remote stations also.
If its a drive and gab thing, well carry on, good buddy.
From Grid Square- CM98KH.
Built-in speakers in most ham rigs are horrible, especially when they are mounted under the seat. I have had to crank up the volume of the IC-2730A to the point where the audio was distorting.
I did not want to mount an external speaker somewhere, nor did I want to play around with bluetooth audio since I liked to have both the stereo and ham rig going at the same time.
So since I have a 1958, I realized that the location in the dash for the center speaker would be empty.
I found a used low-profile 3.5" set on eBay that I bought for a song. (MB Quart FKB Series) They don't need to be fancy since they only need to carry communications-quality audio. (5khz deviation bandwidth on wideband FM)
The mount depth needs to be under 1.5 inches for the speaker to work. The cone also needs to be low-profile so the plastic speaker cover can fit back into the dash correctly.
Anyway it mounted fine, except I needed to remove the protruding grille on the tweeters because they weren't low-profile enough. When I put the cover back there was an obvious bulge in the middle of the plastic grille.
Some wire snips made quick work of the tweeter grille on the MB Quarts.
Before/After photo:
Here is the mounted speaker:
Cover on:
Speaker wire runs down the center console and down the passenger side console to under the seat to where the IC-2730A is located. Audio is much better and easier to hear.
I did not want to mount an external speaker somewhere, nor did I want to play around with bluetooth audio since I liked to have both the stereo and ham rig going at the same time.
So since I have a 1958, I realized that the location in the dash for the center speaker would be empty.
I found a used low-profile 3.5" set on eBay that I bought for a song. (MB Quart FKB Series) They don't need to be fancy since they only need to carry communications-quality audio. (5khz deviation bandwidth on wideband FM)
The mount depth needs to be under 1.5 inches for the speaker to work. The cone also needs to be low-profile so the plastic speaker cover can fit back into the dash correctly.
Anyway it mounted fine, except I needed to remove the protruding grille on the tweeters because they weren't low-profile enough. When I put the cover back there was an obvious bulge in the middle of the plastic grille.
Some wire snips made quick work of the tweeter grille on the MB Quarts.
Before/After photo:
Here is the mounted speaker:
Cover on:
Speaker wire runs down the center console and down the passenger side console to under the seat to where the IC-2730A is located. Audio is much better and easier to hear.
Could you please shed some light on how you routed the power from under the seat to the battery in the back? What route did you take? Any pics or detailed info there would be tremendously helpful, thank you!I finally set out to install a IC-2730A in my 1958. I put it in the same place discussed earlier.
I figured out that you can easily pass a FLAT 6 conductor RJ-12 cable trough the switch blanks on the panel that pops out. I had a few of these laying around. This is for the control head:
View attachment 28852
I attached the MB-5 mounting plate for the Icom with velcro, we'll see how long that holds.
View attachment 28853
If you place the cable correctly, the jack for the cable on the control head lines right up with where the RJ-12 pokes out of the panel:
View attachment 28854
The radio brick is under the passenger seat. The control cable runs down the passenger side of the center console and along to where it can be run under the seat. The sides of the console near the dash pop off pretty easily. This video has a lot of examples of trim removal.
The 12 gauge power cable runs under trim to the back where the battery is. Didn't take long to do that at all.
For the Antenna, I ordered a set of ditch light brackets from @MandRautomotive and drilled a NMO-size hole (3/4") for a Larsen NMO mount. This bracket replaces the flat black trim next to the Cowl. M&R has a video on youtube that describes how to install these brackets.
I figured out that there would be enough clearance most likely for an NMO mount underneath the ditch light bracket when installed, especially with a spacer. So I took a bit of a chance.
View attachment 28855
I drilled a 3/4" hole for the NMO mount with a step bit. I was just under 1/8 inch off where I actually needed to be, but it turned out to be close enough.
View attachment 28856
Anyway, the coax runs out the back of the bracket like you see in the above photo- and there is just enough room to route it underneath the hood from the rear. I soldered a ground wire to the base of the NMO mount since the ditch light bracket is coated and would make for a crappy ground point. There is a very handy existing ground bolt attached to the body close by that I loosened a bit and attached the ground wire (green) to with a spade lug. (And coated with conductive penetrox)
The underside of the NMO mount is protected form the weather with coax seal.
View attachment 28857
The coax runs through the grommet in the back of this photo and it zip-tied to that loom you see running from the cowl. I punched out the middle of the grommet and ran the coax through it.... Slowly, it was tight.
View attachment 28858
The coax comes in behind the dash. All you really need to pull off is the piece under the passenger side dash that covers the fuse box etc. below the glove box. The coax is run underneath the door sill trim. Here is a photo taken from the floorboard looking up.
View attachment 28902
Here's what the antenna install looks like fastened-up. Antenna is a older Diamond NR73B:
View attachment 28859
View attachment 28860
I have drilled several holes in cars for antennas (been a Ham over 30 years) but couldn't bring myself to do it on my Land Crusher. I have a Gen 2 Tacoma with 3 NMO holes in it.
Anyways I don't like lip mounts or mag mounts, and didn't want to run the coax under the lift gate weather seal or something like that. So I figured my best bet was to mount near the fender somehow and run the coax through the factory holes in the firewall plugged up by those grommets. I started looking at ditch light brackets, because that is the obvious place to mount an antenna near the fender on this vehicle. There are a few other fabricators making light brackets that go in the same place, but I went with M&R because the design was simpler and looked closer to stock.
To Do:
Get a Black M6 bolt for the ditch light bracket, it came with a stainless one and looks a bit off. Will also add a black washer to the bolt holding the bracket on to help keep the weather out better.
Yeah sure. Here are some terribly drawn diagrams. I am going to find a piece of trim to hide the wire and coax coming from under the seat eventually:
Pull up the tool compartment cover, the compartment pieces and you can see where the wire can be fished from the driver side rear seat area
It looks a lot harder than it is.
Yes, it looks difficult and time consuming. One more question: Did you fish the power cable using one of those drywall fishing rods? Or you actually took panels off? Or both?
I am thinking about mounting the antenna in the back on the trunk door like the Ed Martin Toyota guy so I need to figure out how to do that.
I’m planning on giving this a try when I get my mobile rig all set up. This should work for any trim but I need to research if from the Toyota head unit there are separate wires going to each component speaker or if there is a crossover it is feeding.
This takes audio out from your ham radio and plays it through the drivers door only on voice RX while the remaining speakers of the truck play music. It then starts playing again after 3 seconds of voice RX inactivity.
THE WIZ External Speaker Wizard – Audio Interrupt
This takes audio out from your ham radio and plays it through the drivers door only on voice RX while the remaining speakers of the truck play music. It then starts playing again after 3 seconds of voice RX inactivity.
THE WIZ External Speaker Wizard – Audio Interrupt
It really wasn't time consuming at all. It took me longer to fish the coax through the grommet for the firewall.
For the most part, all I used was a small trim tool to push the 12 guage power wire up under the trim. The only place I actually removed any trim was in the back to get he wire into the battery compartment as shown in the last photo. Otherwise the wire can just be pushed under the trim, or sometimes use the tool to pry the trim up a little so the wire can be squeezed under. I bet it took less than 10-15 minutes to run the power cable.
I think the Ed Martin Cruiser likely has the coax running inside the hatch trim on the passenger side, then up inside the hatch, through the boot near at the top of the truck then over the headliner to the A pillar. Then down the A pillar to under the seat. I would never mount an antenna in that location though.
Thank you for explaning all this. Yes, I agree the antenna location isn't ideal since quarter side is blocked by the car's body. I plan to put it higher up on the glass hatch and fold it along the light bar when not in use. Or, I can get a shorter antenna that sticks out a little bit above the roof line.
Tapping into the fuse box on a vehicle a lot of times can result in noise getting into the radio on both transmit and receive, especially on a hybrid. It's generally better to go straight to the battery and use inline fuses on the cable.
I can always tell on an FM repeater who has their radios wired direct to the fuse box, they end up with alternator whine on their transmit audio. If you really have no alternative than to go to the fuse box directly, you can sometimes get rid of noise with ferrite chokes etc.
Yeah I mean it will still work but your VSWR might be high with the antenna that close to the sheet metal. If you mostly care about talking to folks nearby when off-roading it probably doesn't matter much.
You're right. I just picked up K400SNMO to test fit the bracket on the rear tailgate, with a 40" whip, it's the same height if I were to mount it like you did—next to the A piller on the passenger side. So, I might as well put it in the front. I will comb through your instructions once again for the antenna fit. Thank you sir.
