jdc50 said:
I have a holder that clips to the air vent and it works pretty well. I am concerned about the temperature changes it goes through. In the summer with the air conditioner on it gets very cold. The opposite in the winter. I am not sure that this is good for the scanner's electronics. Anyone have experience with this?
Question 2 is does the 3m command tapes work well for mounting of the face of a dash board? Will they hold up to the temperature changes plus be able to taken off without damage when I sell my vehicle in the fututer?
Thanks for any imput.
Most scanner that I'm familiar with don't mind being run in very cold temperatures. However, if your radio has an LCD display like most built these days, it can have trouble in very cold temperatures.
I wouldn't want to place my high-dollar equipment into a heater vent's stream. Couldn't you just redirect the heated air to use the vents at the floorboard while your scanner's in-place?
Something to consider in hot humid environments is taking a scanner that's acclimated to the outside and placing into a cold A/C vent's stream. That will tend to condense water out of the air that's inside your scanner... right onto the interior componentry of scanner itself. Scanner + Water = Uh oh.
I'm not fond of using tape for anything mounted in a car. It generally has trouble holding up to periods of alternating hot and cold (especially hot). It'll get gooey and/or brittle with time, and could fail at the worse possible time, for example, during an accident. The gooey residue left behind from removal of the tape can be easy or nearly impossible to remove, depending on the type of tape used, the manufacturer of the tape, and the environmental conditions the tape was exposed to during its installed lifetime.
In the shack pictures forum, there are lots of people who have shown examples of successful installs of portable scanners with various bolt-in clamps. If a portable has to be mounted in a vehicle, this is the method I tend to recommend. Many times, something can be done that involves mounting the base of such a mount in a sturdy, yet hidden location... for instance, the passenger seat mounting bracket, or directly to the floor beneath the carpet (with a very small slit cut cleanly in the carpet for the pole... dark-colored carpet helps to hide the slit at sale time). In any case, I strongly recommend tethering the scanner so it doesn't bounce off your forehead if you are forced into a high-performance driving scenario.
Hope this helps...
