F350 - Major Install

[clanusb]

Do you cover those radios up so when your truck is not in use so no one will know they are there and not get stolen?

exactly what i want to know... how do you keep your vehicles from getting broken into and your stuff stolen?

 

[ChatoB]

The truck is usually in the garage, especially now. When I was a working freelance news photographer and repo-man, I was literally out in the middle of night, in the truck the whole time. I drove 150-250 miles per night in that truck. Now I have a take-home car from work, so the F350 sees less use. In the years I've had it, I have not had one problem with break-in attempts.

On another note, I was just made-aware of a new TV show about freelance breaking news photographers; also known as '"Stringers". Check out this site:

http://www.trutv.com/shows/stringers/

This is EXACTLY what I used to do. (But I stole cars too...) The guys on this show are in LA, but it's the same thing in San Diego. A sale to an LA area TV station is $150 per station, per story. You can sell the same story to all of the area stations. Once in a while you can shoot two stories in one night and sell them both to all seven or so stations. In San Diego the pay is about $85/story and there is also seven stations. If the story you sell goes national, you can 'negotiate' the sale price. Now you see where the money for the equipment came from.

It's funny... I now live in LA's DMA market for news, and watch the LA stations... I see the video that the guys in the link above shoot all the time. They actually overlay a graphic logo of their company names in the corner over the video. It's cool for me to see... it reminds me of the 'old days'...

 

[clanusb]

The truck is usually in the garage, especially now. When I was a working freelance news photographer and repo-man, I was literally out in the middle of night, in the truck the whole time. I drove 150-250 miles per night in that truck. Now I have a take-home car from work, so the F350 sees less use. In the years I've had it, I have not had one problem with break-in attempts.

you must have a big garage. my 150 wont even fit into mine.

 

[Grog]

you must have a big garage. my 150 wont even fit into mine.

Did you clean the garage out first?

 

[ChatoB]

We recently moved and bought a new house in Menifee, CA. It has one of those garages that looks like a two-car garage from the oustside, but it's really a three-car garage. You could fit two cars, or maybe a boat on a trailer, hitched to a truck in the one side. Look at the pictures below. The first one is the outside of the house, and the second one is the garage while the house was under construction. The back part of the left side of the garage is now where my work bench and storage is. The F350 has plenty of room.

 

[clanusb]

mines a 3 car, but its only 1 car deep. my truck is too tall to fit into it, which is why its on the driveway. also the pitch of the driveway entering the garage doesnt help at all either. its not as flat as yours.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Hey Guys,


I do indeed have a siren/PA amp installed in the truck. It was an option with one of the radios and I did install it. I never use it, but it’s there. Maybe I’ll hook it up to the car-alarm. (LOL)

~Chad

I've done that. It was a Motorola Syntor X installation with PA. I hooked it into a simple car alarm system,
which was really just an extra relay and a key switch, connected to the door switches for the interior lighting.

I hand-selected the most powerful siren box available out of about 20 available, and then hand-selected the
horn speaker (Atlas) that was the loudest (by actual testing and measuring) out of about a dozen available.

The result was a siren that was very noticeably louder than the average siren installation of the same sort.
It was really scary.

In some cases, like if I had to park my car in a parking lot at a large shopping center, I'd set the radio to
a "secret channel" in external radio mode. The channel was shared with my portable radio (at the
time, a Saber III) and DPL protected. This allowed me to repeat my voice on the siren/PA from a
distance, if needed.

I once had to use it. I was in West Palm Beach and stopped at a Publix to get some lunch, and when
I came out of the store I observed that there were some "unsavory types" hanging around a little too
close to my car. I still think they wanted to either break into my car or just steal it and paint it metallic
purple and put hydraulics in it or some other stupid crap. So I turned my radio the the "secret" channel,
keyed up, and spoke clearly into the mic: "STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE." This was blasted through
the PA speaker at "Holy crap!" volume, literally echoing off the walls of the shopping center, and the
unsavory types suddenly decided it was time to go for a run. They left rather quickly.


Elroy

 

[Twister_2]

It's a good thing you have such a big truck!

 

[yorkphotog]

Why not?
It is not that hard to keep everything straight with practice, at any given time I have two or more radios on, one on the railroad frequencies, and one on public safety, and maybe one on the ham bands I know who is who and what is going on, all you really need to do pay attention, to one frequency (range) and listen to how the communications are conducted, for a quick example, "G99, Gothenburg", that tells me that one of the ambulances here is calling in to dispatch.
Where on the other hand "dispatcher to UP 8599 west" is the start of a comm on the railroad band, or "KC0QNB from N0VBX mobile" I know that N0VBX is calling me from his car.
then you key into what you are interested in at the moment.

The thing is -- as strange as it may sound, typically, the more radios you have, the quieter your car will be. Think of it this way -- if you use 2 scanners to listen to an entire city, those two scanners will constantly be picking up things. On the other hand, if you have 10 radios to listen to that same city, you won't be hearing as much because each radio will listen to a specific few talkgroups/channels.

 

[KC0QNB]

The thing is -- as strange as it may sound, typically, the more radios you have, the quieter your car will be. Think of it this way -- if you use 2 scanners to listen to an entire city, those two scanners will constantly be picking up things. On the other hand, if you have 10 radios to listen to that same city, you won't be hearing as much because each radio will listen to a specific few talkgroups/channels.

Good point, I used to work in a radio shop and we had about 15 single channel remote monitor receivers, up on a shelf in the shop, they were all on all the time, and they all had indicator lights the would light when the radio went active, the most I remember active at the same time was 5, it was surprisingly quiet even with those radios were active, and you could hear all of them, of course about then one of the radio techs, would inject a 1000Hz test tone into the radio he was working on, it kind of spoiled the moment.

 

[Croaker90]

WHY WOULD YOU NEED ALL THAT!!

It has to be impossible to hear anything in your car if they are all on, it has to be confusing.

Seriously, why do you need that many?

 

[ChatoB]

WHY WOULD YOU NEED ALL THAT!!

It has to be impossible to hear anything in your car if they are all on, it has to be confusing.

Seriously, why do you need that many?

Huh? Did you not read the posts just above yours? I thought that those guys answered that question before you asked it.

I figure that in your area (without checking into it as I write this reply), communications are 'simpler' and your particular view of radio is that of a scanning hobbyist. I make money with the information I hear over the radio. It is important that I hear every dispatch from every dispatch center in its entirety. Each of the radios are usually 'parked' on one of several dispatch talkgroups on one of two complex 800Mhz trunked radio systems in the San Diego area. They are not usually scanning and stopping on random conversations. Sometimes I hear two or three different dispatches at the same time, but I mentally 'tune out' the unimportant information. The radios are set up logically and are typically always on the same talkgroups. The speakers are located in different parts of the cab of the truck and are set at different volumes. When I hear audio from one speaker coming from, say the rear corner of the truck, I know that’s going to be so-and-so dispatch center. Believe me, I have it all figured out and use every radio in the console everyday. It’s not that confusing. (to me)


I consider myself to be a professional in regard to monitoring public safety radio in my area, and have equipped my work vehicle to best suit my needs, and quite honestly, I am proud of this install.

 

[protias]

Very nice

 

[nashscan]

Sounds like...........

WHY WOULD YOU NEED ALL THAT!!

It has to be impossible to hear anything in your car if they are all on, it has to be confusing.

Seriously, why do you need that many?

You remind me of some anti-gun nuts who yell "WHY DO YOU NEED A GUN" or "WHY DO YOU NEED THAT MANY GUNS"

In the United States of America, we are blessed enough to be able to enjoy more than we need. Although in the case of the OP, that is what he needs, and if he can fit more radios in his truck just for S&G, more power to him.

 

[smason]

Is it wrong to be turned on by those pics?

 

[ShawnInPaso]

A true piece of art!

 

[oregontreehugger]

One word: awesome.

 

[torontokris]

great console for sure. for the amount of radios its a very clean install

 

[KC0NYF]

Holy radios batman. Looks sweet!

 

[ff-medic]

Kinda confused.

Nice setup, but have you ever heard of dual band radios ( mobiles ).

Vertex makes handhelds where you can broadcast /receive on one band, but only receive on the other. Seems, you could have just got a few mobiles and two handhelds ( UHF / VHF ) and one for 800 mhz.

Again, nice setup, job well done...But there must have been a more inexpensive route, and a way to simpllify things.

NC1911 !!!