- Putting a mobile radio in your car?
Well, here's how I did mine.
So please keep watching for more.
(rocky music)
Hi, I'm Michael, KB9VBR, your host for Ham Radio Q&A.
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Well, I recently just purchased a new to me car.
After years and years of being second
and even third in line for the nice vehicle,
it was finally my chance.
So this meant that I was able to put a radio
back in the car, although, you know,
I had radios in some of the other cars
that I've driven, but when the kids started driving,
it became more and more difficult
to keep the radio in the car,
because I just didn't know which vehicle
I would be driving on a day to day basis.
But that was no longer the case.
Since taking ownership of this 2014 Subaru Outback,
I immediately made plans to outfit it with a new radio.
I could've put in one of my older radios
that were in some of the previous vehicles,
but I decided that since I have a newer car,
and I was gonna do an install from the ground up,
I'm gonna put a new rig in there.
So I stared doing my research online.
I knew what I wanted for a radio.
It had to be dual-band with a dual VFOs.
It needed APRS support, a really nice screen,
cross-band repeat, compact design,
and potentially, something that had offered
some kind of digital operation.
Since every radio in this, with that,
that fit these features had a removable head,
my plan was to put the radio body
underneath the driver's seat
and the control head somewhere around the dashboard.
So, this narrowed my choices down
to three different rigs: the Kenwood TM-D710G,
the Icom ID-5100a, and the Yaesu FTM-400XDR.
So which radio did I choose?
Well, after a lot of discussion with users
and poring over specifications and reviews,
I finally made my decision on the Yaesu FTM-400XDR.
And the reason is a few-fold.
First, the radio had those dual VFOs,
so I could run two bands at the same time,
monitor one and operate on one.
Just like the Kenwood, it had very good APRS support,
which was important to me.
And also, the one thing that the radio had
over the Kenwood is it gave you
a really nice APRS interaction right from the control panel.
The Icom had APRS features, also,
but the problem with those is that you really need
to be in range of a D-STAR system repeater
in order for those APRS features
to take effect with the Icom radio.
Also, the FTM-400, I feel, had the nicest
of the control screens that I saw.
It has a very nice bright TFT LCD screen
that's easy to read an operate in the car,
a touch-screen operation.
The control head is a little bit smaller
than some of the other radios,
so the formed factor fit the dashboard
of the Subaru very nicely.
And digital support was another nice option,
although that wasn't one of the key deciding factors
on why I selected the radios,
but after using this radio for a little bit,
I really do enjoy the ease
of the Yaesu System Fusion digital system.
So enough about the radios.
I wanna do some more videos in the future
about this particular radio,
but the choice of a particular radio,
really, that decision is up to you,
what your needs are, how it's gonna fit,
your operation styles and habits,
and what you have to work with inside your vehicle.
All those are great rigs,
and I would highly recommend any of those three.
This is just the one that I settled on.
So, let's take a look at the power
and the antennas for the mobile installation.
So first let's talk about power.
It can be easy and convenient to just run your radio
off the cigarette or accessory lighter in your car,
but the only problem with that,
is most of those accessory ports are limited
to about 10 amps of power, so if you're running
a high-powered mobile radio, like a 50-watt mobile
or something like that, the current draw
is gonna be too high for that accessory port.
So the best best to give you the most reliable
power connection for your radio is to run
directly from the battery through the firewall into the car.
My power starts here at the battery.
I have both a positive and a negative power line
connected right directly to the battery.
Both sides are fused,
and a 10-gauge wire running from the battery
through the firewall into the car.
Now, you could probably get by with a 12-gauge power cable,
and usually, when you buy a mobile radio,
they come with a length of either 12 or 14 gauge wire,
but I wanted to have extra power capacity
in case I wanted to add a second radio in the vehicle,
so I chose 10-gauge wire, which will give me
enough capacity to satisfy the current draw
for two of those radios.
Next up is getting your power cable
through the firewall of the car.
Now, different vehicles have different holes
and openings in the firewall that you might
be able to dig around and find a grommet or hole
or something that you can snake some wire through.
I've got a 2014 Subaru Outback,
so with the 4th generation Subarus,
there's usually a grommet just to the left
of the brake booster that's unoccupied,
and you can snake a cable through that.
Now my car has a manual transmission,
so that hole was filled up with the components
for the clutch booster.
So I'm kind of stuck.
What I ended up doing was, there's a nice big grommet
right here that I was able to peel out,
and the car's electrical system runs through that.
There was plenty of space.
I just sliced a little hole into that rubber grommet,
snaked the cable through, tied everything down,
the cable came up on the other side
right over underneath the dashboard by the glove box,
and was able to kind of hide everything,
clean it up along the console.
All right, let's go over to the back of car
and take a look at the antenna.
Now there's always trade-offs
when it involves putting antennas on your car.
Our research tells us that the best place
to stick the antenna is drill a hole smack dab
in the middle of the roof and mount the antenna there.
But since I got a roof rack,
and I wanna be able to use that roof rack,
I didn't wanna deal with that.
Plus, too, with these modern cars,
you have to deal with pulling the headliner
and the side curtain airbags are in the way,
so I looked for a little bit easier route,
and ended up mounting the antenna under the lift gate.
What I'm using here is a Diamond K400SNMO mount.
It's a highly adjustable mount,
so it can go into various areas on the lift gate,
on the hood, in the trunk,
anywhere there's a nice lip for it to attach to.
And connected to that, I'm using the Comet SBB-5
dual-band antenna.
The SBB-5 is a half-wave on two meters,
and it's a five-eighths wave times two on 70 centimeters.
So a nice medium gain antenna.
It's working well for me so far.
I might upgrade to the SBB-7.
It's a little bit longer antenna,
but this one tops out at about six feet two inches,
so I have no problem getting into parking garages
the way the antenna is mounted here.
The Diamond K400S antenna mount uses a RG316 cable.
It's really thin cable, so it makes it
relatively easy to route that cable along
underneath the plastic trim and other components of the car.
I found a video online on how to install
a back-up camera in this car,
and it gave me a lot of insights on how
these trim pieces can come off, what's underneath here,
and it made the installation of the antenna mount
a lot easier.
So I was able to go underneath the trim here
through this rubber tube along the edge
of the headliner, down the pillar,
and along the edge of the cargo area
to where the cable ended up, to the radio main unit,
which is located underneath the driver's seat.
The radio itself is mounted on a small piece of plywood,
so it's kind of free-floating underneath the driver's seat.
I've done that with other radios,
and it works pretty well for me.
So I usually have no problem with that,
and then I can slide it in and out if I need to
make any changes or adjustments,
connect any cables or whatnot.
So let's move inside and take a look
at the rest of the installation.
The radio itself is mounted to the dashboard
using a PanaVise mobile device holder.
I was able to pull this trim out
and the mount screws on to,
next to the climate control system,
fits very nicely, and it's out of the way
of all of the knobs, so it wasn't that difficult to do.
I looked at a different variety of clip
and friction mounts for the control head,
and I found that the PanaVise mount
really fit my needs the best.
I liked how it kind of screwed in
and it was gonna be a secure mounting point
for the radio's control head.
Now, couple of things to think about
if you're mounting a radio in the car
is to be really concerned about
where the airbag zones are.
So, off to the side and the steering wheel
are not places you're gonna wanna install a radio,
so be aware of that.
If you put the radio up on the center top of the dashboard,
just realize that in an accident,
that radio or that control head
is gonna become a moving projectile,
so the best is to kinda keep it to the center
and low as possible.
That's the safest place to stick a radio control head
in a car, away from the airbag zone.
So moving forward, I still need to do
a little bit of cable management.
I've got some of these little Command strips
to help keep the wires in place,
so I'm gonna see how well they work in the car,
if that's a good solution or not.
I don't have the microphone clipped or anything like that.
I did, when I brought the mic up into the car,
I did take an RJ12 connector box
and an extension cable, so I have a nice long cable here,
but I still need to do a mic clip,
and I'm gonna try, maybe those Command strips, too,
to see if that works better.
'Cause I don't really wanna drill a hole in the dash,
not quite at this point yet.
So a couple of things I need to do.
Audio is a little bit muffled with the speaker
underneath the driver's seat,
so I need to install an external speaker,
and I'm looking at different locations,
maybe something down under my feet,
by my feet or under my feet,
that's pointing upwards towards me
will give me a lot better volume than underneath my seat.
Well, that's pretty much it with my mobile setup here.
Pretty happy how it turned out.
I'm still thinking I can add a second radio to this.
I've got room on the PanaVise mount here.
I could probably extend this for a second control head.
Everything kind of stays out of the way
of the passenger, so I'm happy with that.
They're still comfortable.
And it seems to be working quite well for me.
Kinda happy there.
I hope this gives you some insights
on your own mobile radio install.
Please consider that every vehicle
and every radio's gonna be a little bit different,
so you're gonna kinda have to take
your own spin on things, but just kinda wanted
to put this out here as best practices
in installing a radio in your car.
If you have any mobile radio installation tips
or suggestions, I'd love to hear them
in the comments below.
So please leave them behind.
I'll certainly respond to those.
And also, for more ham radio articles and information,
be sure to check out my blog at www.jpole-antenna.com.
If you enjoyed this video, as always,
give me that big thumbs's up.
I really appreciate that.
Check out some of the other videos
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So I'm Michael, KB9VBR, thanks for watching.
Have a great day and 73.
(rocky music)