Ham Radio anyone?

[kkish]

Any one put a HAM antenna on your yet? UHF/VHF is not an issue but HF? This might prove to be intersting.

[Fredvon4]

kkish

KD5NCO here

we have a few threads on the topic

I will not be putting HF on this car and I think most of us will just put in a small form factor 2 meter rig

One of the members is going to have his fortwo at Dayton demoing various antenna mounts for one of the major suppliers (I forget which one)

search around for Ham radio back a few months

Read the owners manual carefully they claim certain power levels will harm the on-board systems and they manage to list uhf/vhf/ and HF power levels.... fortunately their upper limits are about what most rigs have basic power wise... 50W 2 meter 35W at 440 and 1.8~50Mhz 100W

I intend to do a survey once I get the car to see how much power it takes to mess with the on-board electronics.

I usually run very inefficient Ham Sticks or Bug Catchers so I have a 300W and 600W solid state amplifier for HF because the Yaesu FT100's 100W (really about 85W average on SSB) does not cut it in a mobile rig.

But like I said up top... I am not putting the HF in the commuter car... it will stay in the F350 for long trips.

[mendo]

KG6MCL here,

I plan on putting a pretty tall antenna, rear mounted bug catcher.
If nothing else, it will help increase my visibility.
I run a Yaesu FT100 and it is pretty small in the cocpit as I have it remote mounted.

[kkish]

THe concern was that there is so litle mettal body that I can't see a conventional antenna like the 40M hustler will have anything to load against . Perhaps a DDRR from the 70s .. AG8M

[herbvdh]

I am N2OPJ my son is K1VDH ex KB2YZA he went vanity call I dropped the vanity call idea last minute. Where or how will I place a 2 meter antenna and not a glass mount either any thoughts?????

[Fredvon4]

does your smart center have the cut away chassis?

After looking at it hard I think a NMO mount through the tridion will be fairly difficult to get to the back side of to insert it through an exterior hole.

I am considering a aluminum "wing" on the top as a place for a nmo mount.

Or I may just poke a hole in the rear of the poly roof and run ground strap over to the tridion steel structure.

I have a bunch of different 2/440 rigs but am seriously looking at the new very small Yaesu FTM10R

I do not believe in glass mount stuff... others swear by them

Have though about a motorized mount by not sure where it would work on this car

Had a friend once who cut a motorized car antenna for 2 meters and it worked fine even though it never fully retracted in the hidy hole

[SnakeFarm]

I have the FTM-10R on my bike right now and I really like it. I like the PA feature and the standard bluetooth interface which pairs with my scala-rider motorcycle headsets and also works well with an old Motorola mobliel phone bluetooth headset.

The input/output feature is pretty cool but the output is 8w so you would need something to step it down a bit if you wanted to patch it in to the aux channel on the smart's radio. You could then patch a MP3 player into the Yaesu and use it's "auto interrupt" feature to monitor a ham station/bank/band for traffic while lisitening to your other source or the FTMs built in AM/FM.

I have a ground-less staff antenna on the bike and a through-the-glass on my geo tracker (sold yesterday btw) and they both work very well. It even seems that the ttg out performs the staff from mountian tops but that my just be the way the cookie crumbled.

My only beef with the radio is lack of PC programming support. Yeasu says none will be created for this radio either. I had really expected to be able to program it via bluetooth from my laptop but alas...

Now, to the topic... After two weeks of looking at the smart and thinking about it there seems to be A) no real good or easy place to put a ttg antenna ( how do those get a ground anyway?) and B) no real good place to mount the actual radio.

But, I'm still thinking...

[smartcarparts]

QRZ QRZ de W4QNW

never though i;d see a ham radio users thread here on Smart . hi hi

now if only I could find some unique radio items for Smart I;d add them to the store inventory but of course there are none.

Cant make Dayton this year ...too bad wud luv to see a smart with a
bugcatcher.


73
Sherwin
W4QNW formally WA2QNW

[nscaler]

I purchased the Larson 2 meter/440 glass mount. Only thing that will work on the Cabrio. No chance to mount it yet. I have had the car for three days. 318 miles on first tank. Looking into spot to mount the Kenwood D700 and to try and hide the head.
Kind of hard to work on the car when you want to drive it, huh?;)

KE6VUP

[MNMadMan]

KA0JWC here in MN. I plan on putting some sort of 2 mtr rig in my Pure when it gets here in the next couple of weeks. Its in Baltimore now. I have a small mag mount that I plan on using at first. Ill bend the radiator as I may have to stick it on the exposed tridon. Ill know soon enough

73

Scott