RJ45 extender cable for radios?

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jon_k

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May 7, 2008
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Fort Worth, Republic of Texas
Greetings,

I've got the curly cord for my Microphone on my 2820 radio. However, it's not long enough to go from my front seat to the trunk! Instead, I ran some normal CAT5 cable in place. However, now it goes straight to the radio and looks bad and isn't gaining benefit from a curly cord.

Does anyone know of a plug that has RJ45 connections on both ends? That way I can mate the normal cat5 cable with the curly cord?

Looked on eBay, looked on Amazon.

Used terms such as "cat5 extender" "rj45 extender" "Ethernet extender" I found ethernet repeaters, VGA extenders that use cat5... just about any insane device except what I want.
 

jon_k

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May 7, 2008
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Location
Fort Worth, Republic of Texas

I've got some of these. I guess this is what I'll do. If I could get an enclosed thing for 2-3 bucks I was going to jump on it.

This method will just result in a messier design. I guess I can use hotglue to make a case, or perhaps get some of that acryllic you can pour in a mold, and make my own box out of it.
 

Tom_G

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Dec 19, 2002
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Location
Rocky Hill, CT
I run the CAT5 from the radio in the trunk to a spot between the front seats.
From there I use the coupler to the microphone cable.
So you will get some use from he curly cable.
This works out very well.
You can also use 6 conductor telephone cable with RJ-11 connectors to extend the control head.
The 2820 is a fantastic radio.... Best of luck
 

N9JIG

Sheriff
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Dec 14, 2001
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Far NW Valley
I did something very similar with my Kenwood 2m/440 TMD-700A, I mounted the shelf unit in the rear of the van and the control head up front. Since the mic plugs into the shelf unit, I plugged a straight thru Cat-5 cable into the jack on the radio and ran that up front with the control head cable. I used an RJ-45 double-female connector from RadioShack to connect the mic to the radio.
Car.jpg

In a prior installation in my van I had 2 Motorola CDM1250's in the radio stack. Since having the mic cables plugged in directly would have been pretty messy with mic cords draped across the radios I used CAT-5 cables and ran them from the mic jacks into the radio stack and used a computer networking wall box as a central junction box for all 3 mics.

278-2037 (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102882) are the RJ-45 couplers.

278-2093 (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102884) is the box, I have since painted it black to match the radio stack. Look at the very bottom of the picture for it.

I mounted the box in a convenient place to keep the mic cords neatly out of the way and it really worked great!
 
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