I got a message from a fan of my Tales suggesting that I talk about my early mobile antenna installs in my cars. I guess I really have to do this in two parts, the first cars I drove (my mom’s) and then the cars I owned.
Before I even got my driver's license I had installed a scanner and a CB into my mom's car, at the time it was a yellow Ford Pinto. Since she drove us to school most of the time as well as to things like my baseball games (I played in a travel league), dropped us off at the mall etc. it was only natural that I installed radios in her car. We all had CB's back then in the mid 1970's and I usually had a 4 or 8-channel scanner to go with it.
In the Pinto the only practical solution was magnet-mount antennas. With the hatchback it was impractical to use a trunk-lip mount and the parents wouldn't let me drill holes. My dad had a trunk-lip mount for his CB antenna in his Buick LeSabre and later a similar looking one for a scanner but they just would not work with a hatchback Pinto.
RadioShack (actually spelled as "Radio Shack" in those days) had a decent mag-mount CB antenna that had a grey plastic coil at the base and a straight whip about 36 inches or so. It was actually the same antenna as they sold with the hole and trunk-lip mounts with the PL259 style connector on the antenna and an SO239 on the base. I think you could actually buy the antenna itself separately; this came in handy as it was common for the antenna whips to be stolen back then. They even had a similar scanner antenna, with a center coil but I seem to recall the base was a threaded stud instead of an SO239. Both had the same grey aesthetic for the plastic parts. Of course, these came with Motorola plugs to fit the scanners of the day, the CB antennas came with PL259s on the cable end.
By the time I got my driver's license Mom had a Plymouth Valiant. As a sedan trunk-lip antenna mounts were more practical in that Plymouth. I started out with mag-mounts as it was what I had but eventually replaced the scanner antenna with a trunk-lip mount. Eventually I did the same for the CB but I don't think it was until after my sister wrecked the Plymouth and it was replaced with a Ford Granada.
That Granada was the last "Mom-Car" I drove. It got the CB and scanner treatment of course. They both fit nicely on a hump-mount (really popular back in the 80's). I am pretty sure it was this car that first got a trunk-lip CB antenna, a cheap RadioShack one.
My first car of my own was a beat up 10-year-old 69 Chevy Chevelle. It got new antennas that were probably worth more than the car they were installed on. The CB antenna was a K-40 with a trunk-lip mount that I found at a garage sale, still in the package. In those days this was the cream of the crop, pair this with a Cobra 29 CB and an Astatic power-mike and you were the envy of the breaker-breaker nerds. I had one of the three, it wouldn't be for a few more years that I ended up with the other two. It got me to college classes and work just fine and I figured if it died, I would just take out the radios, remove the license plates and leave it where it died. Surprisingly, it never died on me, so I eventually traded it in on a newer car.
This newer car was a 2-year-old Ford Fairmont Futura. It was a two-door sedan that looked like a hatchback. The trunk worked great for trunk-lip antennas, so it got both the CB and scanner antennas removed from the Chevy. I had this car for a couple years and the antennas stayed pretty constant. I think I had to replace the whip once on the K-40 after it was swiped from a parking lot.
After that I got 3 new Ford Mustangs in a row. Being hatchbacks I had issues with antennas. I use Mag-Mounts for a while but eventually found a solution to use a trunk-lip mounted scanner antenna. In these days they did not have angle-adjustable trunk-lip mounts, so I just bent the whip to go straight up. It worked remarkedly well! On the second or third Mustang I was able to source adjustable lip-mounts that had 3/8 threads on them, so I eventually found both CB and scanner antennas to match.
I replaced Mustang #3 with a Ford Bronco II. For the first trip I had to use mag-mount antennas as I didn't have time to install better ones. It was this car however that was the first of mine to have proper hole-mount antennas, albeit the old-fashioned 3/8-inch mounts that were still in use in the early 1990's. These were sufficient for my needs of the time and I was able to find serviceable antennas that fit these mounts for the scanner and CB.
This would be a recurring theme for me. I always keep a couple Mag-Mount antennas handy to use until I can drill in the proper mounts. Even now I have a set in the garage in case I buy a new car tomorrow. (I once bought a new car after going to the dealer to get new wiper blades, it happens...)
The next car was where I graduated to a more professional and amateur radio situation with GMRS and ham radios as well as radios for my agency's channels. This was my Chevy Celebrity. I had this 4-door sedan for over 5 years and after a short time of using leftover trunk-lip mounts on the hood or those crappy 3/8 inch hole mounts I started drilling proper 3/4 inch holes. I found an Antennex hole saw at a hamfest and the first use was for an NMO mount on the rear portion of the roof for a VHF 1/4 wave antenna. Around the same time, I obtained a few dozen Motorola NMO assemblies at a hamfest. These were the high-quality white-nylon cable versions and came with Mini-UHF connectors.
Soon thereafter I realized how much better these worked than the other antennas my cars have had over the years, and I installed a couple more, this time on the trunk. Trunks on sedans in those days had a single layer of sheet-metal skin with a couple braces that left a nice triangular section on the right and left sides that was perfectly located for NMO's. I installed mounts in both of these locations so then had 3 on the car. I needed them as I had both GMRS and ham radios by then. The roof antenna was used for the scanner, the trunk ones for the various ham and GMRS radios I had during the 5 or 6 years I had that car.
The next 11 vehicles I have owned in the last 30 years since that Celebrity have all been mini-vans or SUV's and had NMO's drilled in them. I used that batch of nylon coax Motorola NMO's for the next 5 or 6 cars until I ran out. I would usually just pop off the outer brass ring on the mount and snip off the cable just below the roof, putting in a rubber plug in the hole when I traded the car in.
When I ran out of the fancy NMO's I started using more pedestrian ones but started to get nervous about drilling into the trucks and vans as airbags, sunroofs and other things started to proliferate. I had friends who owned install shops so had the antennas professionally installed. The diamond-tipped blade on my trusty antenna hole saw was pretty worn out after a hundred or more uses on my car and friends cars so I decided to retire it and let the pros do the work.
In the last 10 years here in Arizona I have bought 4 cars, a Pilot, an Expedition and two Odysseys. Each of those had 3 NMO's installed except the latest Odyssey, which had 4. Having 3 meant one was too far to reach from the ground at the carwash so when I get the current car, I had 4 installed, one in each corner. This allowed them to all be easily reached from the ground.
Having switched to NMO's was a real game changer! It allows for great flexibility in placement and choice of antennas. They are easy to install and remove and work great.
As for the antennas themselves: I have used many different ones over the years. Probably the most effective were the Antenna Specialists MON-51. While it is very tall (about 4 feet), it works exceedingly well on all bands. When low-band skip is up there is nothing better! It usually came with a PL-259 base on a mag-mount but by removing a plastic spacer it worked fine with NMO mounts. I rocked a pair of these in some installations, especially on road trips back when low-band was still heavily used in the Midwest. Several friends had them as well. I had a couple of the base-station mounts in my attic that are basically NMO mounts with ground-planes. Eventually I have at least 6 or so of the whips and maybe a dozen of the NMO bases and some of the spacers to make them work with PL259 mounts. I last used them on a trip into California 7 or 8 years ago and eventually sold them off when I purged my garage of accumulated junque. I wish I would have kept at least one, but perhaps a hamfest will have one one of these days.
If low-band isn't your thing then the next best bet for a mobile scanner antenna seems to be dual-band antennas intended for 2M and 440 use. I have had several different models over the years. I have had a couple Diamond, Comet and other brands and they all seem to provide pretty similar results. I keep buying different ones expecting different results but so far they all seem to work pretty much the same.
My most recent installs have been a dual-band (2M/UHF) radio and a pair of scanners, so I have been using a set of Comet dual-band antennas. The nice thing about using the same antennas for all the radios is I don't have to remember which one goes where.
I almost forgot about my various HF antennas! Over the years I have had a couple Icom IC-706 and IC-7000's installed in my cars. These require two antennas, one for VHF and UHF and the other for HF thru 6M. As I usually had ether an Expedition, Pilot or Odyssey with these I found a Diamond K400 mount works best. These allow you to use NMO, PL259 or 3/8" studs. I chose to use a PL259 mount as I had a couple HF antennas with this mount but I also bought an adapter to allow me to use 3/8" mount antennas easily. This came in handy when I took a month-long vacation to eastern Canada, Maine, Boston and New York State. There was some big 6-meter contest going on so I worked a few dozen stations while in some pretty rare grid squares. I used an OutBack whip (with a SO239 mount) for much of the HF work but also use a couple different HamSticks (with 3/8" studs).
I still have these antennas and am thinking of installing my IC-7100 in the car. I would probably use another K400 mount.
Before I even got my driver's license I had installed a scanner and a CB into my mom's car, at the time it was a yellow Ford Pinto. Since she drove us to school most of the time as well as to things like my baseball games (I played in a travel league), dropped us off at the mall etc. it was only natural that I installed radios in her car. We all had CB's back then in the mid 1970's and I usually had a 4 or 8-channel scanner to go with it.
In the Pinto the only practical solution was magnet-mount antennas. With the hatchback it was impractical to use a trunk-lip mount and the parents wouldn't let me drill holes. My dad had a trunk-lip mount for his CB antenna in his Buick LeSabre and later a similar looking one for a scanner but they just would not work with a hatchback Pinto.
RadioShack (actually spelled as "Radio Shack" in those days) had a decent mag-mount CB antenna that had a grey plastic coil at the base and a straight whip about 36 inches or so. It was actually the same antenna as they sold with the hole and trunk-lip mounts with the PL259 style connector on the antenna and an SO239 on the base. I think you could actually buy the antenna itself separately; this came in handy as it was common for the antenna whips to be stolen back then. They even had a similar scanner antenna, with a center coil but I seem to recall the base was a threaded stud instead of an SO239. Both had the same grey aesthetic for the plastic parts. Of course, these came with Motorola plugs to fit the scanners of the day, the CB antennas came with PL259s on the cable end.
By the time I got my driver's license Mom had a Plymouth Valiant. As a sedan trunk-lip antenna mounts were more practical in that Plymouth. I started out with mag-mounts as it was what I had but eventually replaced the scanner antenna with a trunk-lip mount. Eventually I did the same for the CB but I don't think it was until after my sister wrecked the Plymouth and it was replaced with a Ford Granada.
That Granada was the last "Mom-Car" I drove. It got the CB and scanner treatment of course. They both fit nicely on a hump-mount (really popular back in the 80's). I am pretty sure it was this car that first got a trunk-lip CB antenna, a cheap RadioShack one.
My first car of my own was a beat up 10-year-old 69 Chevy Chevelle. It got new antennas that were probably worth more than the car they were installed on. The CB antenna was a K-40 with a trunk-lip mount that I found at a garage sale, still in the package. In those days this was the cream of the crop, pair this with a Cobra 29 CB and an Astatic power-mike and you were the envy of the breaker-breaker nerds. I had one of the three, it wouldn't be for a few more years that I ended up with the other two. It got me to college classes and work just fine and I figured if it died, I would just take out the radios, remove the license plates and leave it where it died. Surprisingly, it never died on me, so I eventually traded it in on a newer car.
This newer car was a 2-year-old Ford Fairmont Futura. It was a two-door sedan that looked like a hatchback. The trunk worked great for trunk-lip antennas, so it got both the CB and scanner antennas removed from the Chevy. I had this car for a couple years and the antennas stayed pretty constant. I think I had to replace the whip once on the K-40 after it was swiped from a parking lot.
After that I got 3 new Ford Mustangs in a row. Being hatchbacks I had issues with antennas. I use Mag-Mounts for a while but eventually found a solution to use a trunk-lip mounted scanner antenna. In these days they did not have angle-adjustable trunk-lip mounts, so I just bent the whip to go straight up. It worked remarkedly well! On the second or third Mustang I was able to source adjustable lip-mounts that had 3/8 threads on them, so I eventually found both CB and scanner antennas to match.
I replaced Mustang #3 with a Ford Bronco II. For the first trip I had to use mag-mount antennas as I didn't have time to install better ones. It was this car however that was the first of mine to have proper hole-mount antennas, albeit the old-fashioned 3/8-inch mounts that were still in use in the early 1990's. These were sufficient for my needs of the time and I was able to find serviceable antennas that fit these mounts for the scanner and CB.
This would be a recurring theme for me. I always keep a couple Mag-Mount antennas handy to use until I can drill in the proper mounts. Even now I have a set in the garage in case I buy a new car tomorrow. (I once bought a new car after going to the dealer to get new wiper blades, it happens...)
The next car was where I graduated to a more professional and amateur radio situation with GMRS and ham radios as well as radios for my agency's channels. This was my Chevy Celebrity. I had this 4-door sedan for over 5 years and after a short time of using leftover trunk-lip mounts on the hood or those crappy 3/8 inch hole mounts I started drilling proper 3/4 inch holes. I found an Antennex hole saw at a hamfest and the first use was for an NMO mount on the rear portion of the roof for a VHF 1/4 wave antenna. Around the same time, I obtained a few dozen Motorola NMO assemblies at a hamfest. These were the high-quality white-nylon cable versions and came with Mini-UHF connectors.
Soon thereafter I realized how much better these worked than the other antennas my cars have had over the years, and I installed a couple more, this time on the trunk. Trunks on sedans in those days had a single layer of sheet-metal skin with a couple braces that left a nice triangular section on the right and left sides that was perfectly located for NMO's. I installed mounts in both of these locations so then had 3 on the car. I needed them as I had both GMRS and ham radios by then. The roof antenna was used for the scanner, the trunk ones for the various ham and GMRS radios I had during the 5 or 6 years I had that car.
The next 11 vehicles I have owned in the last 30 years since that Celebrity have all been mini-vans or SUV's and had NMO's drilled in them. I used that batch of nylon coax Motorola NMO's for the next 5 or 6 cars until I ran out. I would usually just pop off the outer brass ring on the mount and snip off the cable just below the roof, putting in a rubber plug in the hole when I traded the car in.
When I ran out of the fancy NMO's I started using more pedestrian ones but started to get nervous about drilling into the trucks and vans as airbags, sunroofs and other things started to proliferate. I had friends who owned install shops so had the antennas professionally installed. The diamond-tipped blade on my trusty antenna hole saw was pretty worn out after a hundred or more uses on my car and friends cars so I decided to retire it and let the pros do the work.
In the last 10 years here in Arizona I have bought 4 cars, a Pilot, an Expedition and two Odysseys. Each of those had 3 NMO's installed except the latest Odyssey, which had 4. Having 3 meant one was too far to reach from the ground at the carwash so when I get the current car, I had 4 installed, one in each corner. This allowed them to all be easily reached from the ground.
Having switched to NMO's was a real game changer! It allows for great flexibility in placement and choice of antennas. They are easy to install and remove and work great.
As for the antennas themselves: I have used many different ones over the years. Probably the most effective were the Antenna Specialists MON-51. While it is very tall (about 4 feet), it works exceedingly well on all bands. When low-band skip is up there is nothing better! It usually came with a PL-259 base on a mag-mount but by removing a plastic spacer it worked fine with NMO mounts. I rocked a pair of these in some installations, especially on road trips back when low-band was still heavily used in the Midwest. Several friends had them as well. I had a couple of the base-station mounts in my attic that are basically NMO mounts with ground-planes. Eventually I have at least 6 or so of the whips and maybe a dozen of the NMO bases and some of the spacers to make them work with PL259 mounts. I last used them on a trip into California 7 or 8 years ago and eventually sold them off when I purged my garage of accumulated junque. I wish I would have kept at least one, but perhaps a hamfest will have one one of these days.
If low-band isn't your thing then the next best bet for a mobile scanner antenna seems to be dual-band antennas intended for 2M and 440 use. I have had several different models over the years. I have had a couple Diamond, Comet and other brands and they all seem to provide pretty similar results. I keep buying different ones expecting different results but so far they all seem to work pretty much the same.
My most recent installs have been a dual-band (2M/UHF) radio and a pair of scanners, so I have been using a set of Comet dual-band antennas. The nice thing about using the same antennas for all the radios is I don't have to remember which one goes where.
I almost forgot about my various HF antennas! Over the years I have had a couple Icom IC-706 and IC-7000's installed in my cars. These require two antennas, one for VHF and UHF and the other for HF thru 6M. As I usually had ether an Expedition, Pilot or Odyssey with these I found a Diamond K400 mount works best. These allow you to use NMO, PL259 or 3/8" studs. I chose to use a PL259 mount as I had a couple HF antennas with this mount but I also bought an adapter to allow me to use 3/8" mount antennas easily. This came in handy when I took a month-long vacation to eastern Canada, Maine, Boston and New York State. There was some big 6-meter contest going on so I worked a few dozen stations while in some pretty rare grid squares. I used an OutBack whip (with a SO239 mount) for much of the HF work but also use a couple different HamSticks (with 3/8" studs).
I still have these antennas and am thinking of installing my IC-7100 in the car. I would probably use another K400 mount.
