A ham radio mobile transceiver may be a single contiguous unit or it may have a detachable control head, allowing the bulk of the radio chassis to reside out of sight, perhaps under a seat or in a stowage compartment.
The power leads will be routed into the engine compartment to the car battery, while coaxial cable will be routed out to the antenna attachment locations on the exterior of the vehicle.
A mobile station installation will require careful planning and component selection to ensure a well-integrated system that suits your needs and meets your mobile operating goals. The Transceiver: Besides your budget, your selection of a transceiver will be driven in large part by the bands on which you wish to operate. While variations exist, mobile transceivers tend to follow one of three primary styles:.
With that assumption, the decision then turns to whether or not you want to have HF mobile, too. If you do want to reach out to greater distances with single sideband using the ionospheric skip provided by HF, the decision tree then branches to one of these two common transceiver arrangements:.
My choice was a compact all band, all mode transceiver from Yaesu, the FTD. It supported several of my mobile station goals nicely:. Alt link. I clamped mine onto the left side of a console tray in the cabin, arcing the ball joint arm up and to the right so that the control head resides above the center of the console just in front of my gear shift handle and below the environmental controls of the dash board.
I tightly zip tied the microphone clip that came with the FTD onto the ball joint and it holds fast just above and right of my knee while driving. The microphone is out of the way but within easy reach without even a glance, right next to my knee. Low clutter and a clean profile!
Because the FTD integrated speaker resides in the chassis stowed under the seat, I included an external speaker that rests nicely in one of the forward console compartment bays. I used an MFJ Clear Tone speaker for its compact size and low price, and it sits nicely in the compartment facing the cabin to provide clear, loud audio. Power Leads: The power leads for your ham radio mobile transceiver will usually be a set of wires that are sold with your radio.
This will usually be a minimum AWG 14 gauge wire pair often larger 12 or 10 gauge , with in-line fuses. If you are brewing your own power leads be sure to use heavy gauge wire with fuses appropriate to the maximum currents your transmitter will draw. A watt transmitter coupled with 12 AWG wire and 25 amp fuses in both leads is a safe option. Generally, position a pair of fuses close to the battery connection.
Many commercially provided leads sold with radios will have fuses closer to the transceiver, so adding a second pair under the hood is a good safety implementation. Use in-line fuses on both power lead wires to reduce the possibility of fire or damage in the case of a short or other fault in the radio.
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Position the amp in place and mark out the mounting holes with a pencil or marker. Again, check the underside of all surfaces before drilling, then drill away and secure the amp using mounting screws.
Run all your wiring out to the appropriate places and cut to length, always leaving yourself a bit extra. A bit of slack in the cables is better than having them too tight. Cut the insulation off the end of all the wires and leave enough space to attach connector plugs.
Some systems will only require you to use bare wires as a connection. If this is the case, bare the wires back just the right length to suit the depth of the connection sockets. Connect the ground wire to a metal point connected to the car's chassis or a dedicated grounding point. Ensure the ground wire connection is to bare metal. Remove any painted, rusted or dirty surfaces with a file or sandpaper to ensure a good ground connection. Plug your RCA leads, speaker leads and remote turn-on lead from the amp into the back of the head unit.
If your head unit doesn't have a remote turn-on wire, you'll need to wire the amp's remote turn-on wire to either the power wire to your head unit, or another power wire running from your accessories setting on the ignition switch. This needs to be done to avoid having the amp stay switched on when you turn your ignition off, draining your car's battery flat.
Connect the front, rear, and subwoofer speaker wires from the amplifier to the corresponding speakers. Run the power lead from the amp ensuring that it's on the opposite side of the car to your RCA cables through the hole in the firewall and to the battery.
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