Ham Radio and RV's. New forum?

[Montana_2428]

Greetings,

Taking our first long trip starting next May for 3 months. I am
taking Amateur (Ham) radio with me as this is my first love (40 yrs).

We have a new 2955RL and am installing electrical, radio's and antenna's.

There must be other hams out there, tell us how you installed your
antenna and operating positions. Perhaps we can start a new forum
if there is interest.

Thanks for sharing!

[Montana_2230]

The Hayes,

My wife and I are also hams, so far we have only used two meters while RVing. I have been thinking about adding HF too.

I installed the two meter transiever in the cassette player slot of my Dura Max, I never used the cassette player. Since I just recently went to a fiver, I have got to relocate my antenna from the rear side rail location of my truck. Probably going to use a mag mount for the top of the truck.

I would be interested in a ham topic for this forum.

[FredG]

I mounted my 2m/440 antenna with a stake hole pocket mount to the front left stake hole. It's an SO-239 firestik mount. I had to do some minor modifications to get it to work since CB antennas are usually stud mounts. I inverted the so-239 to studmount to allow a PL-259 base antenna to be mounted and changed the stud mount to bolts in order to properly isolate the center and ground.

I routed the coax through one of the small holes in the front of the pickup box body, down and along the outside of the chassis rail and up through the firewall. My SWRs are 1.6:1 on 2m and 1.7:1 on 440. It makes for a nice clean looking install, virtually no wires visible.

I also mounted my CB in the other front stake hole pocket and routed the cable similarly.

I know that there will be some weighing of the signal front to rear due to the ground plane, but I prefer a solid mount versus a mag mount and so far I haven't seen any noticable distance issues in any direction.

As for operating position, I have an Icom with a removable head, so I mounted the body of the radio under the driver's seat and placed the remote head over the open ash tray with velcro top and bottom. I found that the ash tray in my Dodge opens to the same height as the remote head and it has a fairly good viewing angle for me.

Fred N2QHF