2011 Mustang GT Yaesu FT-7900 Install

[tjbroussard]

Completed the installation of my Yaesu FT-7900R in the new Mustang last year, but have not been satisfied with the mobile dual band antenna selections. I saw some very pricey options for disguised antenna on the commercial side, including one that was a wire installed behind the bumper skins.

Question: Has anyone tried a horizontally oriented dual band J-Pole behind a bumper in a similar fashion?

I hope to post some pictures soon..
Thanks for any leads,

 

[tjbroussard]

Pictures

Adding pictures of the install.

1. Radio is trunk mounted user rear deckled between the speakers (not pictured).
2. Control head is on center console mounted using the holes under the "SYNC" logo which I saved to replace when/if I sell the car.
3. Speaker is on glass in drivers side, top left windshield. Great audio even with the maker 500 Sound System. (Used an old eBay Motorola speaker.)
4. Power is direct to battery and "loomed" to trunk.
5. Looking to find a disguised antenna system for the obvious reason.

Thanks for looking.

 

[wcu02mpa]

Great install.....except one thing

I aam huge fan of the new Mustang GT....install looks great except I would not ground the radio to the battery. Take the negative lead and mount it with a chassis ground. Much safer for radio.....otherwise excellent.

 

[radiowave15]

Clean install. I've been wrestling with radio installs in my 2006 Mustang. I posted some pics here as well. I've also done a very similar antenna set up as you have. How did you run the speaker wire? Did you have to take out the headliner or plastic A pillar on the inside? I need to run a speaker wire from my portable scanner to someplace near where you mounted your speaker.

Thanks,
Dan

 

[Rt169Radio]

Looks good.

 

[scannerboy01]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Great setup. It reminds me of an undercover police car because the police in my area use a Dodge Charger as a ghost car.

 

[WatnNY]

delete-delete-delete

 

[VK5ZEA]

I aam huge fan of the new Mustang GT....install looks great except I would not ground the radio to the battery. Take the negative lead and mount it with a chassis ground. Much safer for radio.....otherwise excellent.

I agree with this suggestion. Having the fuse (appropriately sized) in the negative line at the battery is a work around.

It's good practice to connect your negative wire to the chassis close to the battery... but never to the battery terminal. I've seen the result of a vehicles worth of current flowing through a small DC cable and it's not nice.

Michael.
VK5ZEA

 

[tjbroussard]

Thanks for the tip on the negative grounding. I'll make that adjustment.

As for the speaker routing, the A-pillar simply snaps off and I was able to place the wire up through the channel. It sounds great in front of the glass. Second vehicle I do this on and have never had the heat cause any damage, etc.

Still looking for antenna solutions though. What about the rear deck antennas? Anyone try those?

Merry Christmas!

 

[Mtnrider]

Nice install.....But i would use Heat shrink crimps under the hood and other areas were weather happens...

 

[Dann]

I Like It,Verry Nice Setup.

 

[W9WSS]

Speaker Mounting & Dual-Band Antennas

Did you have other options for the speaker? Having it way up there on the glass is a little bit obtrusive; was there an option under the dash away from the feet area?

I've never known of anyone who's had very good luck with on-glass antennas (for transmitting other than cellular usage). There is always a compromise, considering they are capacitive-coupled through the glass. There are higher-power models available that will handle 50 and some 100 watts RF, but they can be somewhat pricey. I like your current antenna mounting configuration, however, I've used a stock VHF 1/4 wave whip which works just fine for my dual-band VHF/UHF mobile antenna. It acts as a 1/4 wave for VHF, and 3/4 wave for UHF. I've compared it to several models of dual-band commercial ham antennas, and the difference is negligible in both transmit and receive. Consider using that with a duplexer, and you might solve your problem.

 

[radiowave15]

I may try popping off the trim and running the speaker wire through. I also have a 1/4 wave antenna with a trunk lip mount for the 2 meter rig. Works well for my needs. As a test I connected a hand held scanner to that antenna was very surprised how well it worked on receive for all of the local EMS/Fire and Police in my area - even those in the 800mhz range. The 1/4 wave antennas was so cheap I bought another one to dedicate to the scanner. So they are both mounted on opposite sides of the trunk. They clear the rear windshield when the trunk is opened too.

As a passing thought I actually spent some time thinking about taking the stock stereo out and getting a much narrower one - the stock stereo is huge in the 2006. A smaller stereo would give room for a ham rig or mobile scanner in the same opening.

Dan

 

[Napalm]

Ditch those horrible hammy mounts and get a Larsen or similar NMO trunk mount. I got one from eBay a while back. Very low profile and very sexy.

 

[SlyFerret]

As mentioned already, definately pull out the ground wire that runs all the way back to the battery and replace it with as short a wire as you can to get a good chasis ground.

You will probably find that grounding this way helps reduce noise from the electrical system in the car quite a bit, both on transmit and receive.

-SF

 

[mmckenna]

I saw some very pricey options for disguised antenna on the commercial side, including one that was a wire installed behind the bumper skins.

Question: Has anyone tried a horizontally oriented dual band J-Pole behind a bumper in a similar fashion?

Stico makes some disguise antennas, but I don't think they make anything dual band. Keep in mind that they are a compromise, and performance will suffer.

Behind the bumper antennas are for VERY short range communications, and will be about as good as mounting your antenna upside down under the car. You will be disappointed. Same goes for disguise license plate antennas.

Sometimes the most low profile thing you can do is a simple NMO with a short dual band, black antenna. I understand you likely won't want it in the middle of the roof, but on the trunk lid might blend in well. You will likely need to fabricate a ground plane for it since the trunk lid may not be metal. Other option would be the TBM trunk bracket mount. It screws in to the side of the trunk opening and will mount an NMO mount. Not perfect, but about as low profile as you are going to get and still get some decent performance.