Fiat Stilo Multiwagon
Since March 2004 I've been driving a Fiat Stilo Multiwagon, and I've moved my Yaesu FT-8100R dual-band amateur radio transceiver into this car. The aerial is a tiny cellular phone style mag mount, which is barely adequate for rural use.
Ford Escort, five door
For the previous seven years I was driving a 1997 Ford Escort hatchback with the same Yaesu FT-8100R fitted. Although I had the remote front panel kit for this, I found it easier to leave the panel attached to the rig body. As with many modern cars the escort is a bit of a pain when it comes to fitting rigs. My solution was to remove the cassette storage tray, from between the broadcast radio and the ashtray, and drill down through the ash tray to support the rig bracket. This allows the ash tray drawer to be opened, and the cigar lighter socket to be used. If I ever sell the car, replacing the cassette tray is easy. Power is taken from the feed to the cigar lighter. The handbook shows this circuit as fused at 15A, and shared with the car radio and dashboard clock. An Ericsson hands free car kit for a mobile phone is also on this circuit. Obviously a direct feed to the battery would have been preferred, but I wasn't keen on drilling through the bulkhead into the engine compartment.
An external speaker is mounted underneath the gear lever shroud, which has a convenient grill formed by the coin storage slots behind the lever. The speaker is just wedged in place, but the audio is a little muffled. I plan to improve the speaker mounting at some point, and hopefully install a second speaker to be plugged into the FT8100's UHF audio output.
A Sirio HP 2070 R dual band antenna is fitted to a Watson hatch back mount. I'm not happy with the mount, as I'd prefer something which could handle a larger aerial. Ideally I'd like a heavy duty hatch back mount that could comfortably take my dual band Watson W-7900. This is a very solid, heavy antenna with a tilt-over base. I've tried it fitted to a 150mm mag-mount, but there's a noticeable deflection of the car roof just from lightly pushing the aerial with a finger.
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File under: Category Amateur Radio, Category VHFand Up.