Thoughts on installing the ham radio gear into the Maroon Monster...

OK... geeky posting, so if this bores the crap out of you, keep on scrolling down the page ;)

Right; I have a rough handle on how I'm going to be fitting my amateur radio gear into the Maroon Monster; there are two main avenues, and a couple of minor ones;

Major Method #1

Mount within the leaf-hand load space storage compartment in the 'boot' area, running the power from the connectors to the accessory socket mounted in the trim panel. The antenna cable would then run around the top of the tail door to the right side of the vehicle.

Major Method 2.

As per #1, but in the right-side , the power running from the fusebox forward of the drivers seat, the cables running along the lower trim into the storage compartment. The antenna cable would run from the radio to its mounting point (see below)

Minor Point #1

The antenna would be mounted via a through-body New Motorola mounting system and a connector converter to the pl-259 VHF connector on the base of the antenna, preserving watertight integrity of the body of the vehicle. A hole would have to be drilled in the bodywork to facilitate the NMO mounting to be fitted.

Minor Point #2

Utilise my existing boot mount, the cable running from the load space storage compartment between the trim and the body panel, to the tail door, onto which the boot mounting would be fitted. Special care would have to be exercised to ensure as water-tight a fitting as possible, given that the antenna cable would be running on top of the door seal strip, presenting a possible ingress point for water leakage.

Minor Point #3

I also have to decide how I'm going to run the remote head extension cable from the radio to the remote head that houses the radio controls; it's a limited length cable (19.7 feet, or 6m), so some intelligent thought has to go into the issue. That might sound a lot, but it's likely got to negotiate some rather odd paths to get to the front of the wagon; in addition, I've already got cable for the dashcam running along the headlining to the top of the left of the windscreen, so that's got to be considered as well. Like I said, I've got some thinking to do!


So...


I'm in two minds about MM 1&2; they both have strong points in favour of either method, so the jury's still out.

However, MP#2 will be the way I go for the antenna mounting. While I do like the idea of a water-tight seal as envisaged with the Motorola mounting system, it is not designed with the loading that would be imparted to it by the mass of the Comet CR-8900 quad-band antenna under wind or impact loadings; it is designed with smaller, sleeker, and infinitely more flexible PMR radio antennas (typically single whips with a small or no loading coils in the base).

The boot lip mounting system from Comet (their K-405 boot-lip mount, one of the units recommended for the CR-8900 antenna) is designed to take the loading that the antenna will exert on it; further, I don't need to drill holes in the body of the Discovery. It has the capability of accepting impact loading from two axes (X- and Y-), thus hopefully helping to preserve the antenna under tree strike conditions. SO, all things considered, it's going to be Minor Point #2 for mounting the antenna.

Now I have to make my mind up about which side of the wagon I mount the radio.

More on this sooner than later...

Installation completion! YAY! (ahem)

Right, it's been a long drawn-out saga, this, but it's finally done.

There was no rain this yesterday, so I nipped out to take a few photos of the completed installation of my FT-8900R Amateur Radio transceiver in my Mk2 Ford Mondeo.

Let's start from the power cables, and work back...

Using yellow (up to 30 Amps capacity) terminal crimped rings, I used 20-amp cable (the thicker red and black twin cable that runs around the front of the battery in the photo) to run from both battery terminals (as recommended in the manual) to the boot (trunk) of the car. I ran the cable through a gap in the bodywork forward of the passenger door and bonnet (hood, to our transatlantic friends), into the passenger compartment (cabin), and under the internal plastic trim, along the left side of the car (here in England, that's the nearside), to the boot. I also used yellow crimped bullet connectors to join the 30-amp cable to the supplied power cable for the radio; it's just easier to disconnect and reconnect that way, and saves cutting cable ad infinitum later on, when I change cars or radios (or both!).

I then ran the remote head control cable and speaker extension cable from the boot, underneath the internal plastic trim, along the right (offside), to the dashboard, and tucked it finger-tight into the crevices running along the joint between top of the instrument cluster and dash top surface. This was a nice tight fit for the control cable, and secured it nicely without the use of cable ties.

The head unit is then clipped into the separation kit mounting bracket, which is in turn bolted to a Brodit mounting bracket (their "Item no 652348 - ProClip - Ford Mondeo 97-00"), which secures over the right central air vent in the top part of the centre of the dash. There was enough room on the bracket to drill holes for both the head unit bracket, and the microphone clip. When you do this yourself, remember to use a vice to securely fix the Brodit bracket in place, as it's made of a slightly flexible plastic. It's easy to drill though once secured, though. The photo shows the head unit installed, with the mike on its clip below; the phone mounting above is my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 in it's Otterbox Defender case, running the excellent RepeaterBook application. As you can see, they're all very easily accessible from the drivers' position.

It's also vitally important to make sure that when both the head unit and mike are in place, all controls can still be on both the car, and the radio, can be safely operated, even in the dark, so the positioning of the bracket - and consideration to head unit overhang on both sides - is really important; in this case, it was a doddle to ensure. I heartily recommend Brodit ProCLip brackets to anyone fitting remote head units for whatever brand of radio you might use, they really ARE that good, and easy to both fit, and utilise for the purpose.

It's also vitally important to make sure that when both the head unit and mike are in place, all controls can still be on both the car, and the radio, can be safely operated, even in the dark, so the positioning of the bracket - and consideration to head unit overhang on both sides - is really important; in this case, it was a doddle to ensure. I heartily recommend Brodit ProCLip brackets to anyone fitting remote head units for whatever brand of radio you might use, they really ARE that good, and easy to both fit, and utilise for the purpose.

As previously mentioned, the speaker extension cable (well, about a third of the total length of it, the rest is coiled neatly in a velcro cable-tie and fixed in place in the boot) runs from the boot, to halfway along the trim, and reappears alongside the central door pillar, where it is then plugged into the cable from the Moonraker speaker I'm using; this cable then disappears under the trim again, to reappear alongside the front of the drivers door, where it runs to where I've sited the speaker, adjacent to the offside front corner of the dash, where the speaker is secured by means of one of the double-sided sticky pads from the YSK-8900 separation kit, as the dash is a cast-iron female hound to secure things to in any other way (Yaesu supply really VERY good adhesive pads in that separation kit!).

Back in the boot (trunk, for our transatlantic friends!), lacking safe knowledge of what might be behind the felt-like fabric material lining of the boot spaces (electrical cables, fuel lines, etc), I opted to use a more predictable surface to mount the radio, one where I could easily access it to reprogram it from my notebook computer if necessary (by folding down the nearside seat back and accessing it from the offside back seat, while sitting down in a civilised manner), rather than conduct public exhibitions of tactical trunk yoga for the entertainment of all - especially as I'm not qualified in that somewhat undignified and unmartial art ;) I therefore secured the main body mounting bracket to the rear of the nearside rear passenger seat, using short self-tapping screws. Since I don't generally carry passengers in the car, it's a safe enough place to mount the radio.

It's worth while noting that the back of these seats are made of an aluminium alloy that requires pilot holes to be drilled - make sure your drill, if battery-powered, has a full charge: It utterly drained the partially charged batteries on my Bosch PSR18 portable unit, requiring a fast recharge, before I could complete the job!

In the photo, you can see the cables all tidily fixed in place by those velcro/fabric cable ties you can get from Poundshop and Maplin; they're invaluable, reusable, and well worth laying your mitts on; they also have the invaluable property of sticking to the felt-like material that Ford lined the boot with, making the job of keeping this fairly neat a LOT easier! As you might also notice from the photo below, the lining is missing from the back of the nearside passenger seat back; it was like that when I got the car (second-hand several times removed!), so opting to put the main body mounting there was something of a no-brainer, as the Americans like to say! (you’ll have to excuse the rust stains in the boot carpeting, that was from a previous owner putting something ultra-rusty there!)

Once I'd secured the main body of the radio into the mount, and plugged in the majority of the wires, it was time to connect the antenna. I'd chosen the quad-band CR-8900 from Diamond, by the way, it appearing to me to look more robust than the Comet quad band offering.

I used the K-405 heavy-duty boot-lip mount for this antenna, it being somewhat more chunky than your average dual-band antenna, and bought the standard Diamond cable kit to go with the combination (RG-58 cable all the way from both ends). I mounted the K-405 antenna bracket on the lower part of the hatchback, since this model of Mondeo has a side-to-side glass upper half, where the upper part of the frame of the hatchback is hidden. It's a real pain to mount anything other than 'bumper stickers' to those things, let me tell you. Now, I would have used the 'ledge' half-way down the hatchback, but for the plastic glued-on 'aerofoil' running to the edges of the ledge on both sides, that prevented me from doing this. So, the lower right side of the hatchback it was.

In the photo of the underside of the hatchback door, you can see the run of the coax - standard thickness RG58 cable; I used cable ties and self-adhesive mounting plates to secure the coax in place, and keep things tidy (remember when you do this to clean the surfaces with degreasing wipes, it'll let the cable base plates stick that much better). There's a very small amount of cable crush (hardly worth a mention, actually), but it's not that important in the grand scheme of things - I've seen much worse in my 30-plus years of operating mobile transceivers. It might look like the nearest cable tie mount one to the antenna mounting is loose, bit that's just an optical illusion.

The photo from outside the car shows the CR-8900 antenna, mounted on the K-405 boot-lip mount (right side, level with the number plate, as you look at it). Really and truly, it should be mounted considerably higher on the car, but as it's the only place that's feasible, there it'll stay.

It was at this point that my troubles began to manifest, the toys departed the pram at the speed of sound, and the dummy achieved low earth orbit along the way...

I had read the English-language version of the antenna manual, and a few reviews of the antenna, before this, and knew from these than a good grounding was necessary to ensure good matching for this particular model of antenna. I therefore used my rotary drill (similar to a Dremmel) with it's wire bell brush, to get to the metal for the mounting's grub screws to bite into, rather than the paint that Ford spray everywhere.

I was therefore utterly dumbfounded when my VSWR meter reported, repeatedly, that I has full scale deflection levels of high VSWR - and then reduced levels of power from the radio. I honestly thought that there were a mere three options where that either I had insufficient grounding, that the coax cable was somehow pinched or shorted, or that I'd somehow blown the PA stage in trying to adjust the VSWR on the antenna. No matter what I did to try and fix this problem, the same results recurred. It was soul-destroying.

Now, I'd bought all this nice shiny new kit from Martin Lynch & Sons (I've been using them for a couple of decades now, and they've been very helpful in all this time), at their new office and shop in Staines, and it's these excellent folks who came to my rescue. They suggested I drive over and see them, and they'd see if I'd done what I suspected that I'd done. They'd even stick the kettle on for me. So, Friday last, I did just that.

One of their engineers nipped down from their workshop, took a glance, checked the antenna at first, then the K-405 mounting and cable, sucked his teeth (always a bad sign for the customer when an Engineer does that, you can almost hear the cash register digits spinning when they do that!), then brought along his multimeter and another VSWR meter, and poked around for a few minutes as I hovered, like some expectant father. I'm very happy to report that none of my concerns were valid. It was my (broken, lying, hypocritical) VSWR meter at fault, and a more effective replacement VSWR meter is shortly to be procured to replace it.

The new installation seemed now to be working so, after the promised coffee, and a chat with the engineer, it was time to check the proof of the pudding. Having quickly reprogrammed the radio from my notebook (using CHIRP, which I highly recommend), I drove down the M4 to Berkshire, for a weekend with my better half. Along the way, I worked GB3BN, the Bracknell 2-meters repeater, and received excellent signals and reports through it.

I checked again today, and successfully opened GB3FX on 6 metres, some 25 or so miles away with roughly an R5/S3 response, but haven't yet had a chance to try out 10 metres with it yet; I'm a tad outside the coverage area of the nearest 10m box, unfortunately.

Anyhow, as a result of all of the above, I have a working, fully functional installation of a nice new ham radio and antenna on my ageing car, and I couldn't be happier

Another set of wheels, so time for another radio...!

About a month before Christmas, and with the acquisition of another car (my Land Rover being off the road due to a problem that I cannot nail down just yet), I decided it was high time I sought a new radio for my Amateur Radio hobby, to replace the one that vanished, along with a previously stolen car of mine. So, I began to save for one, calling it “Roger's Radio Fund”. I reckoned to myself that I should have enough squirrelled away to get a decent radio, within about two to three months (probably four at the outside). So imagine my shock on Christmas day when a certain member of my family gave me a cheque for a decidedly impressive enough amount to complete my funding exercise well ahead of schedule!

So, it was time to decide on WHAT radio to get.

Band-wise, at the very least, it had to be dual band 2m/70cm (VHF and UHV, the two most commonly-used bands for mobile amateur radio communications), although 4m (70 MHz) and/or 6m (50 MHz), and even 10m (28 MHz), would be nice. I'd obviously need a multi-band mobile antenna for it too.

Mode-wise, it would have to have, at the minimum, FM; ideally, it would also have some form of DV (digital voice) mode as well, such as D-Star (Icom's somewhat proprietory implementation of digital communications), System Fusion (Yaesu's somewhat proprietory implementation of digital communications), DMR (Digital Mobile Radio, the actual Open Standard that's ironically beginning to be used in commercial equipment, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_mobile_radio), or similar.

My specification also called for the new radio to be able to be programmed using a computer using the Ubuntu Linux OS (I have CHIRP, and can also run some Windows applications under WINE on my laptop). For times when manual operation is required, it had also be able to be relatively intuitive to program, and have an easy to read display (no cluttering and/or small-print!). If it could be operated via bluetooth and/or an Android application as well, so much the better.

For security, it had to have a removable head unit, for when the radio wasn't being used.

Make-wise, I have predominantly used Yaesu in the past, and had an FT-7800 until that car got stolen from my garage one night, dammit (a few years back), so I'm used to their radios; I've also used Icom hand helds (I have an ID-51E, and find it irritatingly complex to use, although that's probably the compact menu system on it), and a very simple Baofeng UV-5R, which I find ridiculously easy to use. The FT-817 is a joy, and is used for QRP when I get the chance (not very often). The 817 can be operated from my Android phone as well, using Repeater Book and other applications via bluetooth, which is nice.

This then raised a very good point: Shold I include DV as a requirement, in the hope that my crystal ball would be right on the money a few years down the line (I already have the Icom ID-51E hand held), or should I save my money, and go analogue, which will still be there down the line?

As mentioned above, already there are three standards being used in DV boxes in the UK: Icom's D-Star, Yaesu's System Fusion, and DMR.

There were similar arguments, I recall, about the pros and cons of the 1750Hz toneburst versus CTCSS/DCS (this concerns an audible tone burst, versus subaudible coded tones, used to access repeaters – these are rebroadcasting stations on the amateur bands), which was eventually settled by the authorities over here making a preference for CTCSS, if I recall correctly. Only took maybe ten years to settle!

Anyhow, with all the choices and options, I came toa relatively easy decision:

Icom were going well, but were frankly too expensive, and as yet, as pointed out above, the DV aspect has not yet really settled down sufficiently well enough to decide on a full-size DV radio at this time. Also, my experience of DV has been less than impressive, with "underwater speech" a regular thing to hear (granted, it's been with my ID-51E hand held, but not any the less valid for that).

Kenwood don't have anything I'd call affordable within my budget with the capabilities I'd like (the dual band TM-G710GE came close, with the APRS/GPS, but was close to half a grand on its own), and most the other contenders don't measure up either.

So currently, and after much deliberation, the shortlist is down to the Yaesu brand. Specifically, the Yaesu FT-8900 Quad Bander (10m/6m/2m/70cm), with the YSK-8900 head separation kit, and a Diamond CR-8900 quad-band antenna. It also has the benefit of being a direct descendant of the FT-7800 that I owned a few years back, which should make operating it relatively straight-forward for me; in addition, being a Yaesu, it'll be very reliable, as are, of course, all the 'big three' makes.

The interesting thing here is that I can probably add APRS/GPS (a way of showing where you are, using GPS units relaying their data over the amateur bands) capability via the data socket in the back of the radio, with the use of a cable and either an Android phone or a Raspberry Pi-type computer later on. I'll have to look into that, but if it's a non-starter, it's not really a big deal, to be honest.

Now, it won't do Digital comms, nor can it be controlled by bluetooth with the Repeater Book package for Android by Repeaterbook.com, but it's a decent compromise between affordability within budget, coverage, and ease of use; I'm going to mull on this a little while longer, but I suspect this is going to be the way I go.

So, in the next couple of weeks tops, I'll be heading off to Martin Lynch & Sons in west London, who I've used many times before, with very satisfying results, to buy the new radio, and then it'll be down to me, to install the stuff in my car!

More updates on this, at that time!

Oh, XXXXXX!

So, hot on the heels of getting to grips with CHIRP, I encountered a problem. Not with the software, or computer, or even Linux. But with an old and faithful friend of mine, my twenty-plus-years-old tri-band amateur radio hand-held Yaesu VX-5R.

Turns out that the antenna socket is loose, and try as I might, I cannot lock it down: I spent a LOT of hours earlier trying, including disassembling the thing (don't worry, I put it together again and it still works!) to get at the SMA connector that forms the antenna socket, but to no avail. So, it's going to have to go into honourable retirement, until such time as I can figure out how the heck I'm going to lock up that socket without breaking something else on the radio.

So. Time, then, for a new hand-held. I've been debating this for a while now; a couple of years back, I got hold of an Icom ID-51A, and while it's a very nice radio, it's not something that I want to be carting around all the time - for a start, it cost me well over four hundred quid when I got it, and truth be told, it's a bit irritating to use, being a hybrid Dual-band analogue and digital (Digital Voice & D-Star) FM hand held.

Now, there's a newer version out now with a couple more bells and whistles, but however you look at it, there's a LOT packed into it, hence the complications every so often when using it. Don't get me wrong: I'm hanging onto it, but it's a rig I don't really like to take out of the house, both because of the cost of the damn thing, but also the need to have to consult the damn manual when I want to do something that I either forgot how to do, or haven't done before, with it.

What I really need is a cheap radio that I won't get too upset about if it gets dropped, that's easy to use. So, having been recommended just such a radio a while back by a friend, I've gone ahead and ordered one off - surprisingly enough - Amazon. Yep, they sell Ham gear too. Who knew?!

OJ yeah, the radio? It's a Baofeng UV-5R dual-band FM hand-held transceiver. And it cost me a shade under £23.

That's right.

Twenty-three quid.

I've seen a bucket load of good reviews on this rig, and a couple of not so good ones, so balance of probabilities? It's what I need: A reasonably reliable, cheap hand held.

The reviews also highlighted one major issue with the UV-5R: It's allegedly a complete sod to program the memory channels without the aid of a computer, so, I've also ordered a programming cable, an external fist microphone (saves hauling the radio off the belt when you want to use it), and a couple of other things for it as well (extended capacity batter and a replacement antenna, as the stock one is apparently not that brilliant) as well, which is still, at a total order value of close to fifty quid, which is close to a TENTH of the cost of the cheapest a similar big-name rig with a similar range of accessories as I've ordered for this Baofeng rig. It's quite amazing.

Granted, the after-sales service is likely to be complete pants, but for the price, you really cannot argue one bit. It truly is, in amateur radio terms, a 'disposable radio'.

Oh, remember I said a tenth of the cost above? I wasn't joking. Here's a comparison with one of my favourite makes, Yaesu, versus the Baofeng...

First, the Baofeng UV-5R...

BaoFeng UV-5R 136-174/400-480 MHz Dual-Band DTMF CTCSS DCS FM Ham Two Way Radio	£22.57
USB Programming Cable for Baofeng UV-5R/666S/777S/888S Radio	£3.04
NAGOYA NA-771 Dual Band 144/430Mhz U/V SMA Female Antenna for Baofeng UV-5R WOUXUN	£6.39
Pofung Baofeng BL-5L Extended 3800mAh 7.4V Lithium-Ion Battery for UV-5R Radio Black	£10.90
Original Handheld BAOFENG UV-5R Speaker-mic for dual band radio	£5.79
BAOFENG 12V DC Travel Car Charger Cable for BaoFeng UV-5R	£1.33
Total	£50.02

Next, the Yaesu FT1-DE, a broadly comparable currently available radio...

Yaesu FT1-DE 144/430MHz Dual Band	£429.95
Programming cable not neeeded – data held on removable PC-readable MicroSD card	Nil
Replacement antenna not needed, stock antenna reasonable	Nil
Yaesu SBR-14LI (FNB-102LI) high-capacity battery	72.95
Yaesu MH-34B4B speaker-mic	31.96
Yaesu SDD-13 Cigarette Lighter power cable – 12V	29.57
Total	£564.43

Thus, when you look at the costs, and what the end result will be (transmitted analogue FM signals at approximately 5 Watts output), there's really no choice at all, is there?

More once I've got the thing in my grubby mitts in a couple of days.