F150 Console

[nhfdcadet]

Have any pictures of the antenna setup?

I will take some detailed pics for you when i have a chance, I drove the hoopty to work today so the truck is at home.
But if you use your imagination, its a crew cab F150, there is a back rack on it, at the lower drivers side (the straight bar that sits horizontally across the bed) there is an L bracket with the low band antenna, drivers side top (vertical bar, at the roof line) is an L bracket with a sti-co flexiwhip cut for UHF, passengers side top has a sti-co flexiwhip cut for vhf, then lower passengers side has the CB antenna, which is a browning NMO mount.
For the repeater, I have two fender mounts on opposite sides, so VHF is on the drivers side and UHF is on the passengers side. Measured from the antennas on the back rack, it is right about 12 feet in between them. So they're far enough away that it shouldn't cause any harmful interference (also they're in totally different planes). For those, I used Browning NMO antennas, 2.4db for VHF and 3db for UHF, which I found on amazon.

I may make changes to the antennas once I really have a chance to test them out, also may consider using a duplexer for the VHF/UHF repeater and make it a single antenna,

The link used for the two 180 series kenwoods is here:

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I added a rocker switch to the console to give "ignition" power to those two radios, and repeater activation is controlled by the AUX output on the VHF radio.

I also should add, that through testing this repeater, I discovered that it actually passes the MDC ID of the portable transmitting. Forgive my geekiness, but I was very excited about that!

 

[nhfdcadet]

Have any pictures of the antenna setup?

 

[sefrischling]

Nicely done. Have you considered swapping the ToughBook for a tablet? I have my ToughBook, but it s not mounted any longer, I swapped to an iPad Mini, which can do everything I had the ToughBook for, and it is such a massive space saver, while having access to the EMS, Emergency Management, Weather and other tools for operating on scene. It runs I Am Responding, I just removed it, as I get that on two phones, that are in cradles in my trucks, so no sense in having it on the iPad as well.
The ToughBook now sits under the back seat, for when I absolutely need it, which is increasingly rare.

 

[sefrischling]

The state gave out a bunch of boxes a while ago that cross link VHF, UHF and 800, various departments have them, but somebody has to remember to bring it, and remember how to set it up.

People actually use STOCS? I honestly can't recall when STOCS was used last in my region. We tried to use it for a Countywide drill, to get V/U/8 all working together, and we discovered the STOCS box didn't work.

 

[nhfdcadet]

Nicely done. Have you considered swapping the ToughBook for a tablet? I have my ToughBook, but it s not mounted any longer, I swapped to an iPad Mini, which can do everything I had the ToughBook for, and it is such a massive space saver, while having access to the EMS, Emergency Management, Weather and other tools for operating on scene. It runs I Am Responding, I just removed it, as I get that on two phones, that are in cradles in my trucks, so no sense in having it on the iPad as well.
The ToughBook now sits under the back seat, for when I absolutely need it, which is increasingly rare.

Yeah the price point of $0 vs whatever an iPad costs was pretty persuasive for the toughbook though lol

 

[sefrischling]

Yeah the price point of $0 vs whatever an iPad costs was pretty persuasive for the toughbook though lol

Yea, that tends to be a factor. My Toughbook came from the Department, it effectively now only exists to program radios on the fly, or to be used with a BlueTail P25RX. The iPad Mini is mine, I just found I was using it 90%+ of the time, and yanked out the ToughBook desk.

 

[nhfdcadet]

I never posted the final pic after changing to the whelen controller last year. Don't mind all the fur, i'm between vacuumings

 

[KG5HHS]

Absolutely beautiful! I wish I would have invested the money for a console with control heads! At the time I had never dealt with Hand-held control head units and wanted to dabble. I definitely miss the console look and feel though. Great Job!

 

[madrabbitt]

I think many of us have that same CB, for the exact same reason.

"we dont need it much, but its out of the way for when we do"