Grounding a Van With Sliding Side Doors

[K7RWB]

I own a 2002 Chev Venture van and just installed an IC-7000 with Little Tarheel II antenna and Turbo Tuner.  I am now dealing with HF grounding/bonding of the vehicle.  The rear hatchback, left and right front doors and hood are easy to ground/bond with braided strap.  However I am a little perplexed on how to ground/bond the two sliding side doors on the right and left.  As they move quite a ways when opened not sure how to handle this other than a long piece of braided strap screwed to the main body of the van and then somewhere on the doors so not to interfere with the opening and closing of the doors.  Any help here would be much appreciated!

[WX7G]

Why are you bonding the vehicle? If you have some problem that you think bonding might help you might want to see if bonding the doors helps. Temporary straps that do not allow the doors to slide can be installed. If they don't help the problem remove the straps and go on to something else.

[K0BG]

Don't worry about it. The most important surfaces are the horizontal ones, not the vertical ones. The doors are fairly well grounded through their closure contacts. Not perfect perhaps, but good enough.

I have a question for you. Why did you select the Turbo Tuner?

I'll add this... The most important part is the exhaust system, because it acts like an antenna for the hash generated by the ignition system. While you're at it, bond the hood.

[W0FM]

I was wondering the same thing.  The "screwdriver" part of your Little Tarheel antenna tunes the antenna to resonance just fine.  That's the whole idea of the antenna's design.  No tuner needed.

Terry, WØFM

[K3GM]

I was wondering the same thing.  The "screwdriver" part of your Little Tarheel antenna tunes the antenna to resonance just fine.  That's the whole idea of the antenna's design.  No tuner needed.

Terry, WØFM

The Turbo Tunder device, isn't an antenna tuner per se.  It's more of a controller that winds the screwdriver up and down finding the best match per band.  As you tune up and down a particular band, the device will retune the antenna for the operator.

I think Alan was asking why the Turbo Tuner brand, as there is at leat one other brand that does essentially the same thing and does it perhaps a little better obtaining +12V for powering the antenna motor directly from the vehicle instead of thru the rather thin foil trace on the PC board of the particular radio you're using.  This is why I use the Better RF brand.

[K0BG]

That's exactly what I was referring to. You can rewire the Turbo Tuner to be fed power separately from the radio, and I certainly would recommend that to anyone using one, even with a Yaesu 857. For the same basic reason, I don't recommend folks keying amplifiers directly, with any radio that doesn't use an isolated relay. In either case, short something out, and.....

[W0FM]

Thanks for the clarification.  I am not familiar with the Turbo Tuner and assumed (my bad) it was a standard antenna tuner.

Terry, WØFM

[WX7G]

Where did you mount the Little Tarheel?