Show me your Antennas?

[Stephen21]

Hey Everyone,

I am wanting to add a 2m/440 antenna and a screwdriver with a LONG whip. Putting antennas on vehicles has never bothered me but I have never had a car this purdy before .

I am just in love with the looks of my Gladiator and want to "do it right".

What have you all done? How has it worked out for you?

Pic's would be most welcome.

Thanks.

S.

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[SarGeek]

I used the Diamond K412S mount and the Diamond NR770HB (UHF base) for the antenna. It's a trunk/hatchback mount and I attached it to the cowl on the driver's side near the a-pillar.

Good grommet access through the firewall right under the master cylinder. That's where I ran power through as well since I went with a remote control head and mounted the radio behind the back seat.

 

[MrZappo]

Post of mine from a while ago

A little plasti-dip makes it look much nicer ... The mount is an NMO mount from Topsy Products ... Works perfect ..

 

[The White Rabbit]

I used the Diamond K412S mount and the Diamond NR770HB (UHF base) for the antenna. It's a trunk/hatchback mount and I attached it to the cowl on the driver's side near the a-pillar.

Good grommet access through the firewall right under the master cylinder. That's where I ran power through as well since I went with a remote control head and mounted the radio behind the back seat.

Looks good.

 

[Radio Guy]

"Show me your antennas" Gosh, that sounds a little direct and I'm kind of embarrassed, but since you showed me yours I guess I can show you mine if this is considered a private place to do that.

Here are my hood mounted NMO mounts with a couple of VHF/UHF antennas before I tweaked the whips vertical. The other pics show my inside bed wall universal mount with adapter plates for military antennas, 3/8-24 thread for HF whips, bayonet mount for huge HF screwdriver antennas and one for NMO. There is also wiring back to the radio area under the rear seat to feed various HF auto tuners and that also becomes the control and motor lines for the screwdriver antennas. There is also a matching transformer for HF that fits inside the mount going from 50 ohms to either 25 or 12.5 ohms to better match up with the big screwdrivers on the lower HF bands.

I later got a KB Voodoo bed rack and just my luck, it completely covered the area over the rear bed wall antenna mount. So I installed a Motorola Mobat high power HF ball mount on the side of the bed rack and used wide braid grounding straps to bond the bed rack to the truck sheet metal. It worked out great. The ball mount won't hold up to the big heavy screwdriver antennas but it works well with my other HF whips and easily handles the 500W amp I sometimes use. This Gladiator is a rolling radio station.

 

[MOPAR Boy]

"Show me your antennas" Gosh, that sounds a little direct and I'm kind of embarrassed, but since you showed me yours I guess I can show you mine if this is considered a private place to do that.

Here are my hood mounted NMO mounts with a couple of VHF/UHF antennas before I tweaked the whips vertical. The other pics show my inside bed wall universal mount with adapter plates for military antennas, 3/8-24 thread for HF whips, bayonet mount for huge HF screwdriver antennas and one for NMO. There is also wiring back to the radio area under the rear seat to feed various HF auto tuners and that also becomes the control and motor lines for the screwdriver antennas. There is also a matching transformer for HF that fits inside the mount going from 50 ohms to either 25 or 12.5 ohms to better match up with the big screwdrivers on the lower HF bands.

I later got a KB Voodoo bed rack and just my luck, it completely covered the area over the rear bed wall antenna mount. So I installed a Motorola Mobat high power HF ball mount on the side of the bed rack and used wide braid grounding straps to bond the bed rack to the truck sheet metal. It worked out great. The ball mount won't hold up to the big heavy screwdriver antennas but it works well with my other HF whips and easily handles the 500W amp I sometimes use. This Gladiator is a rolling radio station.

Can we kindly see a pic of the interior of your JT to see the radio control heads, 2M/440 and HF, pretty pls?

My JTRD Gecko arrived at my dealership today, and I plan to mount a Motorola APX8500 HP (110 watts) quad band radio, and a Micom 3T, with the Motorola WIMA HF antenna. I love picking up great ideas from others’ install experiences. Thanks so much!?

 

[Kindafearless]

Best picture I could find :P Ignore the argon bottles.

That is a motobilt bed rail antenna mount. The wires are routed through the center console and out of the truck through adding a hole in one of the drain plugs. It fits snugly, so nothing can get back in.

 

[Sportsbiz]

Diamond NR770HB antenna and mounted onto a Diamond K400S. Radio control head mounted on to a CMM Off-road ball mount on the freedom panel release lever. Keeping line of sight to the trail was key for me.

 

[Radio Guy]

Can we kindly see a pic of the interior of your JT to see the radio control heads, 2M/440 and HF, pretty pls?

My JTRD Gecko arrived at my dealership today, and I plan to mount a Motorola APX8500 HP (110 watts) quad band radio, and a Micom 3T, with the Motorola WIMA HF antenna. I love picking up great ideas from others’ install experiences. Thanks so much!?

I knew this dirty little "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" game would stir up more radio peeping Tom's. I just posted my radio control heads in another thread earlier today and here it is again. A RAM ball mount on the front of the center console is working well for me. They have different length arms so you can have a control head snuggleled up against the console or hang it out in space which give you more options of angling it up or off to one side.

The radios in the truck this week are an old Icom 706MKIIG mostly for HF and a Yaesu FTM-400XDR for VHF/UHF, although the Icom also does VHF/UHF. That's one reason I put in two NMO mounts on the hood. Although I sometimes run a Thales PRC-6809 MBITR in the Thales 20W docking amp and that feeds a Shakespeare 30-512MHz military whip on the rear bed wall mount as shown in one of the pictures in an earlier post. I just set the Thales docking amp on a rear seat and use its remote control head with built in mic. I also have a Harris XG-100P quad band hand held and just lay that on a seat connected to one of the antennas then use the bluetooth speaker mic. I suspect your APX8500, Micom and antenna cost more than some have spent on their entire vehicle.

Anyway here is the RAM mount and control heads again. The radio guts are under the passenger rear seat where I pulled 4ga wire to a home made power distribution box with aircraft circuit breakers feeding Anderson Power Pole connectors with an adjustable timer relay to shut down the radios if I forget to turn them off, protecting the battery(s). I included a pic of that as it was going in.

Your Micom Wima antenna will probably need a stout mounting bracket and I highly recommend the same Harris military mount I used shown in some pics in a previous post. The mount is very strong and I doubled up the expanding Rivuts using two per mounting hole (or slot) into the upper bed wall just behind the wheel well. This spot provides adequate ground plane for HF working off the entire flat bed, walls and bed rails. You can then make an adapter plate for any type of antenna mount and I just ordered some precut 1/4" thk X 6" dia aluminum discs off Ebay and matched the standard military bolt pattern then installed my own mounts.

These Harris mounts show up on Ebay here and there and its the only cone shaped version with a removable panel and they come in green CARC. Don't get the standard HUMVEE version that has two little rods bent into hoops to protect the cable connection, those are very light duty.

Since you will be using a quad band you might take a look at the COMPACtennas. These are very controversial antennas but I have tested several models against the Larsen Tri-band, Laird Tri-band and some others and in most cases the COMPACtenna works as good or a little better and its in a smaller package. I included a picture of two COMPACtennas on my hood mounts.

 

[MOPAR Boy]

Best picture I could find :P Ignore the argon bottles.

That is a motobilt bed rail antenna mount. The wires are routed through the center console and out of the truck through adding a hole in one of the drain plugs. It fits snugly, so nothing can get back in.

Very nice? Do you have a puc of your

I knew this dirty little "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" game would stir up more radio peeping Tom's. I just posted my radio control heads in another thread earlier today and here it is again. A RAM ball mount on the front of the center console is working well for me. They have different length arms so you can have a control head snuggleled up against the console or hang it out in space which give you more options of angling it up or off to one side.

The radios in the truck this week are an old Icom 706MKIIG mostly for HF and a Yaesu FTM-400XDR for VHF/UHF, although the Icom also does VHF/UHF. That's one reason I put in two NMO mounts on the hood. Although I sometimes run a Thales PRC-6809 MBITR in the Thales 20W docking amp and that feeds a Shakespeare 30-512MHz military whip on the rear bed wall mount as shown in one of the pictures in an earlier post. I just set the Thales docking amp on a rear seat and use its remote control head with built in mic. I also have a Harris XG-100P quad band hand held and just lay that on a seat connected to one of the antennas then use the bluetooth speaker mic. I suspect your APX8500, Micom and antenna cost more than some have spent on their entire vehicle.

Anyway here is the RAM mount and control heads again. The radio guts are under the passenger rear seat where I pulled 4ga wire to a home made power distribution box with aircraft circuit breakers feeding Anderson Power Pole connectors with an adjustable timer relay to shut down the radios if I forget to turn them off, protecting the battery(s). I included a pic of that as it was going in.

Your Micom Wima antenna will probably need a stout mounting bracket and I highly recommend the same Harris military mount I used shown in some pics in a previous post. The mount is very strong and I doubled up the expanding Rivuts using two per mounting hole (or slot) into the upper bed wall just behind the wheel well. This spot provides adequate ground plane for HF working off the entire flat bed, walls and bed rails. You can then make an adapter plate for any type of antenna mount and I just ordered some precut 1/4" thk X 6" dia aluminum discs off Ebay and matched the standard military bolt pattern then installed my own mounts.

These Harris mounts show up on Ebay here and there and its the only cone shaped version with a removable panel and they come in green CARC. Don't get the standard HUMVEE version that has two little rods bent into hoops to protect the cable connection, those are very light duty.

Since you will be using a quad band you might take a look at the COMPACtennas. These are very controversial antennas but I have tested several models against the Larsen Tri-band, Laird Tri-band and some others and in most cases the COMPACtenna works as good or a little better and its in a smaller package. I included a picture of two COMPACtennas on my hood mounts.

Thanks, Radio Guy. Very nice set up you have, all the way around! So, my radios are used in Part 90 commercial service. The Motorola APX8500 shipped from Motorola with their included standard mobile quad band antenna (with standard NMO mount). We will use that antenna, as we have to cover all 4 bands, and don’t want to mount 4 separate antennas.

 

[Radio Guy]

Very nice? Do you have a puc of your

Thanks, Radio Guy. Very nice set up you have, all the way around! So, my radios are used in Part 90 commercial service. The Motorola APX8500 shipped from Motorola with their included standard mobile quad band antenna (with standard NMO mount). We will use that antenna, as we have to cover all 4 bands, and don’t want to mount 4 separate antennas.

Some of the stock Motorola supplied quad band antennas have a very fat base, a good 2 1/2" inches across and they don't fit so well on trunk lip type mounts. If that's what you get it really needs a traditional roof type mount in sheet metal so the base of the antenna sits flat on the sheet metal. A trunk lip mount or L bracket type will be much smaller diameter than the antenna base and you will have a huge gap between the base of the antenna and whatever the mount is attached to.

You also need to have an adequate ground plane and lifting a mount up above the ground plane as in an L bracket will usually cause tuning and SWR problems.

 

[Kindafearless]

Very nice? Do you have a puc of your

Thanks, Radio Guy. Very nice set up you have, all the way around! So, my radios are used in Part 90 commercial service. The Motorola APX8500 shipped from Motorola with their included standard mobile quad band antenna (with standard NMO mount). We will use that antenna, as we have to cover all 4 bands, and don’t want to mount 4 separate antennas.

Looks like you got hit with autocorrect. Pic of?

 

[MOPAR Boy]

Some of the stock Motorola supplied quad band antennas have a very fat base, a good 2 1/2" inches across and they don't fit so well on trunk lip type mounts. If that's what you get it really needs a traditional roof type mount in sheet metal so the base of the antenna sits flat on the sheet metal. A trunk lip mount or L bracket type will be much smaller diameter than the antenna base and you will have a huge gap between the base of the antenna and whatever the mount is attached to.

You also need to have an adequate ground plane and lifting a mount up above the ground plane as in an L bracket will usually cause tuning and SWR problems.

Our company has used this antenna on all sorts of pickup trucks, albeit this is our first small Jeep pu. We use our 2-way shop for all of our installs, fabrications, and welding. They have devised a steel pole mount that mounts the base of the antenna at roof height, and the width of the steel pipe is about 4 inches. It looks quite similar to the design used in the Jeep XMT, mounted at the front 2 corners of the bed, just behind the cab. The HF antenna is mounted above the left front corner of the bed, and the quad band APX antenna above the r frnt corner of the bed. Both of these vertical steel pole bases are welded to a steel base runner, which is bolted to a large flat stock steel plate that runs all along the under area of the front of the bed, and back along, and underneath, a portion of both of the bed sides. I asked the shop and they said their antenna analyzer always gas showed good SWR’s and performance, on all 4 bands, on all of our trucks, although I haven’t seen an actual field Smith chart run, as of yet, on any of our trucks. Most comms are truck to helicopter, or truck to local repeater, so we have had very good results.

 

[Stephen21]

Wow!!

Thank you all for your replies. I am going to digest all of this. You have given me some great examples.

 

[Daddiator54]

Just installed the ronin antenna with ZERO loss in FM stations or loss in quality of said stations. Keep in mind that my results will not be the same as your results.

Exactly what I was looking for. Something modest and clean so that I could roll through the car wash w/o worry.

While you can pick it up directly from their website, I got it from Amazon for quick delivery.

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