Creative Installations

[KE5ZRT]

My wife and I enjoy riding our bicycles as often as possible. These are 3-speed beach cruisers with dual band whips mounted on the baskets. We operate on battery power with our handy-talkies and speaker mics. One of these days I want to install a generator to top off the batteries.

The trailer used to be a canvass covered kid hauler and I rebuilt it for advertising in our local parades.



Please share your creative installations here.

[aintgotnun]

That's a neat looking setup!

[Andy N1ORK]

Neat! I can just picture an Yeasu FT-857D with a Tar Heel for HF clamped to the basket.

[KE5ZRT]

Here's another one that I am proud of. This is in my storm chasing vehicle (2003 Pathfinder) a.k.a. my toad. The whole radio is installed in the dash where a small storage cubby used to be. With a lot of grinding and filing, I made the plate out of 16 gauge steel and I had a friend weld some brackets to the face to fit the factory mounting holes on the radio. The rubber trim around the radio is sliced automotive vacuum line for aesthetics and to reduce vibration against the steel plate. I also ran a remote speaker to the headliner since the factory speaker is now inside the dash. Overheating has not been a problem since the Icom 208 has a cooling fan.

[Radio]

This VHF/UHF install was quick and cheap, since everything I needed was laying around in the radio room. The power runs direct to the trailer batteries and the antenna is a short dual band mag mount that sits on the pin box.

I keep a 6ft length of ordinary CAT-5 cable and a RJ-45 butt connector in the cubby hole with the radio. This allows extending the mic so one can recline on the couch while on air.