Trunk Mount w/ coax lead-in

[bob-the-scanner-man]

I think this is the right place for this. If not, I'm sorry.

I'm currently using a Browning Br-311 trunk lip mount with a Browning Br-180 vhf/uhf antenna on my Mercury Montego. I've had this setup for about 3 months now and I'm noticing a good bit of wear on the coax where it passes in between the trunk lid and the rear quarter panel on its way into the trunk. This gap is just wide enough for the coax to pass through but when the trunk is shut it gently presses against the coax. Over time this has caused the a small area of the outer rubber covering on the coax to wear away to the braided shield. I put a strip of electrical tape over this to keep it from worsening, but now I'm thinking I may change the trunk mount to something that has a lead-in of small diameter coax before getting to the larger diameter coax. This would prevent coax wear and tear.

Can someone suggest a cheap trunk mount that has a lead-in and is threaded for NMO? So far I've only found some that are in the $50-60 range that were not NMO. My current mount was $20 and I'd like to spend about that much for a mount with a lead-in. Are there any that will fit my budget?

Thanks.

 

[W2NJS]

If you use smaller coax, such as RG174, your 800 mHz reception will suffer. Customary cable for mobiles is RG58. Unfortunately there is no free lunch when it comes to mobile antennas; you bite the bullet and drill a hole, thus obviating both water and cable squash problems, or you make do with the
several disadvantages of non-hole antennas.

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

I'm not trying to receive 800mhz. Only TX and RX on 2M.

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

I'm thinking I might just pick up an el cheapo trunk mount on Ebay and then get a run of small diameter coax, like LMR-100A or some other low-loss small diameter coax. Then I would just unsolder the coax that came with the trunk mount and solder in the smaller diameter coax in its place. This would solve my problems and by using a low-loss yet small diameter coax I could avoid pinching but at the same time avoid any major feedline losses.

RG-58AU(which is what my current mount uses) has 6.1db of loss per 100ft at 146mhz. LMR-100A has 8.8db of loss per 100ft at 146mhz. My run will be about 16ft total, so the differences between the losses of the coax at the frequency I'm using should not be that noticeable.

It's worth a shot at least. And the total cost would be right around $20 which is much more appealing than a $60 Comet mount.