Kenwood TM-D710A installation in a 2014 Ford Focus

I finally got around to finishing the installation of my Kenwood TM-D710A into my new Ford Focus. I took this out of my F-150 when I traded it in a few weeks ago. I feel like less of a man driving this little car, but I can't argue with cutting the car payment in half and cutting my fuel usage by 2/3.

For the installation I tried running the wire myself, but an almost 300lb 6'2" guy just doesn't fit well in the small spaced under the dash, so I paid someone to run the cable for me. Since I was having a pro run the wires from the battery to the trunk, I decided to go with 4ga wire so that I would only have to do it once.
I mounted the radio body and the power point under the rear deck with self-tapping screws. The control cables run down different sides of the car. The cable to the mic goes down the driver's side, and the control head cable runs down the passenger side. They are neatly tucked inside the molding along the floorboards, then cross under the seats to the mic and control head.

The control head is mounted using the MT-7 mount from AES . It only required loosening the seat mounting bolt, sliding the mounting arm under the bolt, and tightening it back up. It was the easiest part of the install!

I still have some wiring clean-up in the trunk, but I ran out of wire loom, so that'll be a project for another day.

Next up is a Little Tarheel II HP , an Icom IC-7000, and hopefully an Ameritron ALS-500MR

Going places in the truck

So this post isn't about actually about going anywhere, instead it is about the direction that I want to go with the radios in my truck.  If you look at some older posts here you will see that I have tried a few things in the past, but I think that I am finally figuring out what I want to get in the way of radio gear in the truck.

So let's start at my current position.  Right now the only rig that I have in the truck is a Kenwood TM-710a dual-band 2m/70cm analog radio with APRS support built in:

This is an awesome radio with great receive and a lot of features.  Just like the picture above, I keep the left side tuned for APRS and use the right side for chatting/scanning.  I hope to add a Green Light Labs GPS in the near future, at which point I will enable beaconing, but it is a lot of fun watching the stations near me pop up on the screen and exchanging text messages with them.

Moving on, the next radio that I would like to add is the Kenwood TS-480SAT to get HF back in the truck.

I used to have an Icom 706MkII in there and discovered that I need at do a lot of work to get the truck RF quiet, which will be another post of series of posts.  But that doesn't change the fact that I miss having HF in there, especially on longer trips.  I want to couple this radio to a Tarheel 100A-HP antenna.

The Tarheel covers 80m through 10m without me having to get out and change a resonator tip or move a wander lead around.  I would like to either find an electronic auto tuner that enables the tune button on the 480SAT, or build one myself.  That would enable one-touch-tuning of the antenna for any band.

The next thing that I would like to add is the Icom IC-2820H to get me the ability to access 2m/70cm digital modes (D-STAR).

I'm starting to see more and more repeaters go digital and would like to be able to access them.  Plus I've been reading about a lot of fun stuff that can be done with PC integration in the D-STAR world and want to be able to play around.

Still in the D-STAR world, I would also like to add the Icom ID-1 radio.

This radio lives in the 1.2GHZ digital world, and also has the ability to do 128k data connection, which means internet access when there is a repeater that supports it near by.  You can also do 128k data simplex between two radios which opens all sorts of fun and interesting possibilities, especially for EmComm work.

Okay, still with me?

I have a few more things that I would like to add also.  One of them is a Cisco 1232AG 802.11 wireless access point.

And of course, even an AP needs an antenna, so I was thinking of getting one of the antenna below to resonate the 2.5GHz/5GHz microwaves from the AP.  If I added a high quality switch to flip the antenna between the AP and my laptop/mobile PC, I would also be able to war-drive nicely.  I could then tie in the GPS and plot open access points as I drive along, but that is a subject for another post.

An AP would let me access the data capabilities of the ID-1 from my laptop anywhere near the truck!  Of course, this AP doesn't run on 12V, so I would need a DC-DC regulator to get from 12V to the required 48V at 300mA.  I've seen several on-line, like the one below, but I think that I would prefer to build one.

So anyhow, after all of that, and about three or four thousand dollars, I would have comm gear in the truck that spans the spectrum from 3.5MHz to 5GHz.  Not quite DC to Daylight, but not bad for a civilian pick-up owned by a hobbyist.  Maybe in a future post I'll do up a Visio diagram of how it will all fit under the backseat and how the cables will route.  Then I can dream in earnest...  The plan will be all set and all that prevents its execution is, well, ya know... Money.  ;-)

With all that I will bring this lengthy post to a close.  I've been participating in the Kenwood TS-590 net on 7.235MHz as I write this.  Lotsa static, but a great net, so if you have a '590 come over on Wednesday nights at 0100z.

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Mobile Install

I drive a 2011 Ford F-150, which is not the most radio friendly of vehicles.  It's not the worst, but it is not the best either.  When I only had a single radio in the truck, it was fairly easy to accomplish a professional looking installation.  As I added an 11m radio, and then a scanner, things got more difficult.  I ended up deciding that I needed to build a console in place to house these additional radios.

Yaesu FT-2900R

The first radio that I put into the truck was a Yaesu FT-2900R, which is a 2m mono-band ham radio.  This F-150 has a cubby hole at the bottom of the dash under the climate controls, which fit this radio like a glove while conveniently allowing plenty of air circulation to help cool this 75W solid aluminium beast.  I took out the cubby hole section, removed the back of it with a dremel, mounted the radio inside, and *bam*, it looked like original equipment (of course, that was before this blog, so no pictures).  The only downside was that it was a little difficult to see the top of the display on the FT-2900R to see if the offsets and tones were on at a glance.  This worked fine and dandy for months...

Galaxy DX-959

Enter a Galaxy DX-959 CB radio (if you're a ham and hate on CB'ers, keep it to yourself, I like to be able to talk to the truckers while making long trips, and sometimes it's just fun).  There is a world of difference between the way that a lot of CBs are built, versus the way that a lot of ham radios are built.  First off, they tend to be bulkier and flashier.  Needless to say, this wasn't going to fit in some handy preexisting pocket...

Radio Shack PRO-2050

Then along comes a scanner that I had originally purchased for use inside, then got into the whole scanner thing and decided that I wanted more features available in the house.  This makes for an interesting mounting challenge since there are no built-in mounting options on this scanner!  This brings us back to the whole idea of building a console for this all to fit into.

I decided that if I built a console, it would need to house all three radios, not just the two additions.  It would also need to look as stock as possible.  And lastly, it needed to be cheap!  I have seen some awesome custom professional installs but I have also seen some amazing price tags on them.  Since I'm not on an episode of "Pimp My Ride", I had to have an affordable solution.  I went through several iterations of the design, with the biggest issues being how to physically mount the radios in a small location.  My final solution was to build a box that fit between the vertical trim pieces on the dash, and angle back to the seat.  Originally, the radios were to be flush mounted, but to better make use of space I ended up angling the radios inside the new box.  Additionally, the original though was to have the box be independent of radios so that I could remove them individually for service.  However, space constraints dictated otherwise.

The end result was achieved by mocking up the sides of the box using cardboard to create a template, which was then cleaned up and copied to 11/32" plywood.  Once this was done, I was able to start finalizing the placement of the radios that I had mocked up earlier on the cardboard.  I ended up connecting the Galaxy radio directly to the plywood due to the space constraints mentioned earlier.  So much for a modular design.  

Since the scanner and the Galaxy radios were of similar size, they became the top and bottom spacers for the console.  I then used some scrap 1"x 2" to secure the two pieces of plywood together front and rear.  I used some scrap plywood to build a set of rails to hold the scanner in place, since it doesn't have a mobile mounting option.  The Yaesu presented a problem, since it was over two inches narrower than the other radios!  I ended up building spacers out of the 1" x 2", and mounting the 2m radio to them.

I then bought two $5 black rugs from Wal-Mart that closely resembled the carpet in my truck, and used a combination of 3M spray adhesive and carpet tacks to cover the sides of this contraction that I was putting together.  

Once all this was done, I had to take the whole thing apart to install it into the truck.  That turned out to be a pain in the rear!  Things that line up easily on the bench sometimes don't work so well in real life.  Such was the case with this console.  No tweaking was needed, but maneuvering around in the confines of the pick-up when I'm decidedly in the fat-boy club was a challenge indeed!  After much cussing and ill-will, things finally lined up properly and I was able to see my handy work:

As you can see, the radios are held securely, but it definitely needed a top!  This became in interesting problem.  How to come up with something that would fit?  Measuring would have been a major pain and I always mess that up anyway.  So back to the cardboard!  A snip here and a snip there, crumble it up, start over, and eventually, poof, a template is born!  I then transferred that to some 1/4" plywood that I had laying around and got busy with the jigsaw.  Eventually (and a few broken parts later) I had a top for the console!

But that's ugly, who wants to look at wood all day in a pickup?  So how to finish it?  I could paint it, but that would look funky.  I could stain it, but again, wood...  So I decided to cover it in vinyl.  A local upholstery shop was nice enough to give me enough material to take care of it, after declining to do it for me (they were afraid of breaking it, which I understand since I broke a few).  Again, the dilemma, how to actually do it?  The final decision was to use the spray adhesive again, and just razor blade the holes for the radios.  It actually turned out pretty well!  The only downside was that the end-grain was exposed, but a handy sharpie marker took care of that...LOL!

The finished product turned out like this:

Please no comments about the state of the dirt on my floorboard.  Consider it an experiment to see how long carpet survives without cleaning!

If I had it to do over again, I would try to cut the holes a little straighter with the jigsaw, and I would probably use some flat bar stock and build cradles for the radios to allow them to be serviced individually without massive effort and potentially marriage shattering language.

I'll attach a few more pictures, just because I can, and I am proud of this lash-up for some reason.  ;-)

Eventually, I intend to add an Icom IC-7000 to the mix.  I'm not sure whether I'll replace the Yaesu with it, or if I'll keep it so that I can monitor 2m or run APRS from the truck.  What do you think I should do?  Anyhow, if you've made it this far, you should be ready for bed, your insomnia has been cured!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO