Just bought a 2004 Silverado Ext cab, 5.3L, auto. Base package.  I also used the grommet that is near the drivers fender.  I used a box cutter to make a slit on each side, being very careful and wa sable to run my B+ line through. Pretty slick.  However, there is a spot to drill through the firewall where the clucth cable would go through, BUT  there is now a computer thinggy there for the electronic throttle control, so drilling there is no good.  

Antennas  ?  2 NMO's in the roof.  Just drill a hole, the damage is less then using a mag mount :-P It was actually very easy top run coax in the headliner. in the center above the dome light, and the rear above the third brake light.   For the center, remove the dome light, drill your hole, then remove the drovers side grab handle, and gently pull down the headliner and snake your cable through...slick !!   For the rear, that's tricky, but if you peek inside the cab from the outside through the light hole, there a square that you can see the headliner through.  Run your cable through it going TOWARDS the rear window and you coax will pop out from the headliner. then tuck it under and make your way to the B pillar.  Overall it's not too bad.

Interesting topic.

When I lived in Madison,WI, we had a awesome Skywarn net setup. Darryl AB9BB was a super great net control, we had use of the best repeater in South Central WI the CWRA 146.88 repeater.

Then the NWS decided to change things around.

They made it virtually mind boggling to make severe weather reports.  They wanted Lat and Long, and all this other stuff before they would accept reports.

To make a long story short, Darryl quit Skywarn, and now runs his own local weather spotting net on the MARA 147.15 repeater in Madison. As far as I know, Skywarn is dead there...thanks to the Sullivan,WI NWS office.

Kinda a sad story, but true

Matt
N3IVK

Someting I did with my car,
I have a 93 Chevy Cparice Ex police car. Heavy Duty everything in it.  I have 4 Motorola rigs and a Icom 2800. I built myself a console.  (pics are on my qrz profile).

But something that I did which comes in handy is....a Astron power supply.

When I wired the car, I used a heavy 6 guage wire to run as a "power bus" to the trunk to power everything.  IN the front where the battery is, I used a standard Motorola fuse holder ( they were plenty to me). I also took another fuse holder and built a short pigtail to go from Astron crimp rings to the Motorola fuse holder.

By doing this, if I were parked in a area where AC power is availiable, I could lug along a 20 or 30 amp astron, and run a ext cord out to the car and carefully sit the astron in the engine compartment (one the car cooled alittle) and power all my radios off it. Beats having to leave the car idle all day. This way, the radios are not connected to your vehicles 12V side anymore.  

Little ideas like that can be a big help. It's nice too when you wanna run the Icom 2800 as a cross band repeater for awhile.  The 4 Motorolas (3 X9000's and a A7 Spectra) just on RX pull almost 4 amps.

Also too...something I like is a half way mag mount antenna.  Remember half waves do not require a ground plane.  Kind of a handy antenna to setup in a pinch. I used a Diamond dual band mag mount that just happened to be a half wave in 2 meters.  Used it on my carpet in front of my sliding glass door as a base antenna for 3 years (sucks to live in a apt).

Of corse the twinlead J-Poles are handy too.  Alot of ideas floating around out there.

Personally, I like to use cross band repeat when I can. I dont like sitting in a hospital emergency room with a mag mount 10 feet away from me, running 50 Watts, getting into everything electronic in there. Would much rather run low power to the vehicle and repeat it. Yea yea, people will complain about the legality of cross band repeat, but in a emergency situation, nobody should be complaining becuase it works !

I would strongly suggest, if you plan to use any cross band repeat, to test it out and become familiar with it's operation. A cross band repeater that is setup wrong will hose up any repeater. If used properly, it's a awesome solution for hitting far away rpt or talking from a basement of a hospital..etc.

Dont forget duty cycle.  and dont run your cross band repeater on high power if you can help it. Ya might end up with thermonucler meltdown ;-)

ANother idea for cross band repeat, is one way cross band repeat.  If you can hear the repeater with you HT in the basement..or wherever, but you cant get into it. One way repeat would work out best.  Program your dual band HT to RX on the repeater output, but have it TX on your cross band repeat freq.  And setup your rig for one way repeat, or if it doesnt support that, the rpt input with a odd offset or turn the squelch way up.  I know how it works, just kinda hard to explain it.

Anyways, hope it helps you out some.
73's
Matt
 

Lon,
Lighten up on the guy alittle eh ?

Christ, he said he's working on it, should have left it at that.   And why would he link to another site   Does Chevy have a link to Ford's website for APR rates ? Come on.  

Matt Orr
N3IVK

PS - Good job eHam. Dont let these kind of people spoil the hard work you guys do.

The diamond NR72BNMO is the way to go. I tried the little Comet thing, and it's a peice of crap. The internal spring loaded center pin goofs up, and if you twist it down tight, it wont work...huh ?!?

I went through 2 comets, and so did my buddy Phil WB9TAE, we had the same results.

I went to the Diamond, maybe a inch longer but works great. I have 2 of them now, never had a problem.

Matt N3IVK
www.angelfire.com/ga/morr

I'd ask first if your allowed to have a antenna on the train....lol, I can see them throwing a fit because of security issues.

I took a amtrak from Alabny,NY to Chicago. I took my HT with me, but just ran the rubber duck.

I'd be more interested on finding the Amtrak frequency. I think they run UHF.  Saw them with Motorola HT750's on my train.

Matt N3IVK

Hi Daniel,
Good question !

Alot of different ideas on this one, but the other posts did well. I isolater is prob your best bet.
I too am contiplating a second battery for my truck, as it has the room for the second battery...just gotta install the battery box and go

Only thing you wanna watch for from what I can see is the current rating of the isolater vs your alternator output. I do think the gel cell idea is good, seems to me if you had a regular lead acid battery, fumes would be a problem inside a car.

Let us know what you end up doing, and good luck !

Matt N3IVK

The holesaw works fine, just remember to dispose of the shaving the right way DO NOT wipe them up as they will scratch your paint, and be sure to get all the shavings off as they will rust right away.

Punches do a clean job, but as said earlier...you need to get to both sides. I use a holesaw, it's what my shop provided me, and am used to useing. We bought ours through TESSCO, was made so you CANNOT drill too far down and into the headliner.

The dome light is a nice spot, but becareful on clearance....dont want the light melting through the coax or plastic cover over the solder connection.

Matt N3IVK

I used to live in Roswell,GA.

Something to think about,
For 2m and 440, think about intermod. You will want a good radio with IMD rejection. My Kenwood TM-742 did very well in a high intermod enviroment.  I ran Motorola commercial eqiupment most of the time, so I didnt notice the intermod soo much ;-)

If ya just want a cheap, simple 2m mobile, then go with the Kenwood TM 261, or the Icom 21000 also claims to do well in high RF  areas.  Either way, read up about it, and look over the product reviews from other hams.  

As for antennas, for a 2m only mobile, I would go with a quarterwave. For the Atlanta areas, a 1/4 wave will do fine. It's low profile and performs better in a city than a 5/8 wave.   If you were in the desert of flatlands..I'd use a 5/8 wave.

For dual band, Diamond makes a nice little dual band antenna the NR72BNMO I think is the model.  I have 2 of them, work very well for the size.

I would recommend a 3/4 inch NMO mount that has been drilled into the roof.  They dont leak and Motorola makes a very nice rubber plug if you decide to sel the car, on your SUV you'd never know it was there unless you got on a ladder and looked for it.

As for Atlanta goes, lemme give ya some advice....440 rocks down there ;-)

Matt N3IVK
www.angelfire.com/ga/morr

Makes a clicking noise while scanning ?  Sounds like a microprocessor issue.  SWR doesnt have anything to do with it. If it's scanning, then his radio is in receieve ;-)

Check the product reviews for the 2720 and see if other owners have had the same experience.  If they have, sounds like a comman issue with that radio.  If not, then you may need warranty service.

The product reviews are on the left hand side of EHAM's website under RESOURCES.

My Icom 2800 is the first Icom mobile I have had, and dont have any scanning issues with it. Maybe just something with that model you have ??  

Just my thoughts on it.
Matt N3IVK
www.angelfire.com/ga/morr

OK, I am sure I will cause some flames for this one...lol

Homeland security people aint gonna force no one to trunking...period.  Unless...they refuse homeland security grants for dept's for radio funding ??  I could see that happening.   No trunking..no cash.  But they really cant force them to do anything.  

Now..for the comment on Motorola Trunking.
Motorola trunking blows the pants off any other type of trunking.  Yea, it's expensive, but it works.  APCO 25 ?  Can't comment on it, since I never had a chance to play with it. (just being fair)
But, for Type I and Type II systems ANALOG, they are awesome.  So if someone upgraded to 800 MHZ trunking, and now they dont have coverage Sounds like someone didnt plan out that system to well.  LTR ?  Come on, that's a joke for Public Service. It sucks when you key up a LTR portable and have to wait for the connect....and wait...and wait.   With Motorola, you keyup, get your connect tone and talk. Our Type I system that was in place in Madison,WI  blew away any LTR system. And with a rx antenna at 900 feet with dual preamps and a tx antenna at 750 feet with a 75 Watt MTR2000 repeater, the coverage was awesome. With that system, someone DID the homework. City of Madison recently put into service a Type II system on 800. They love it. It was properly pre-planned, coverage tests done, HT coverage all through the city.

When our Type I system was sold out to Nextel (yuck), we were forced to go to UHF LTR. Trust me, our customers noticed the difference right away, as well as I did.  I'd take our old Type I system back any day.

For the longest time, LTR wasn't approved for Public Service. I beleive now it is since they added GOTO data. Used to be in the old days with a LTR system, you had to leave your radio on 24 hours a day. Hevan forbid you drive out of range and your group gets trunked elsewhere...then you drive back in range and guess what ? no radio for you.

With Motorola, at least it has the smarts to tell you on your display "OUT OF RANGE" and, when you did drive back into range, your radio listened to the data channel and knew where to go to follow your talkgroup.

Yea, I admit, Motorola dropped the ball on some things, which makes me sad.  The CDM series mobiles arent as good as a Spectra or Syntor X9000, and they also shyed away from low band, but they do know how to make a analog trunking system. The Minitor 3 ?  Yea, they saw the mistake there and tried to make things better with the Minitor 4.

Sorry, had to vent alittle  But when I personally saw the difference between LTR and Motorola trunking, had to defend the ole batwings

Matt N3IVK
(ready for the flames)

We had a customer that had 60 Watt Low band Motorola Maxtrac's in these big huge front end loaders.  All were 24V. We used Astron's 24 to 12VCD converter....worked ok. The front end loader operater usually installed his own am/fm and cb in the unit as well. Make sure you get one that can handle the current (amps) you will need.   We had good luck with them, from time to time one would burn out and need swapped out.

I figured I would throw that option out to ya, much simpler then having to monkey with the batteries, cables, etc.  NO need to worry about stuff being burnt up.

Matt Orr
N3IVK

I also have to agree on the Larson NMO 2/70C antenna. I have 2 of them, work very well.

For a small antenna, look at the Diamond NR72BNMO. I have 2 of these also, much better then the Comet competition.  It will need a ground plane.

And yea, drill the hole in your trunk lid  IF your scared about it, take it to a local radio shop, most of them have a special drill bit for NMO mounts. I have 6 on my car and one on my truck. 5 on my previous car...never had one leak or rust. Motorola makes a handy NMO rubber hole plug if you decide to sell the car. Pops right in, very slimline and works great.

Matt Orr
N3IVK

In addition to the already mentioned, the 5100 can do dual VHF/VHF or dual UHF/UHF receive, the 5200 cannot do that.

I have a 5100, bought it used, been a good radio. Finals starting to get weak on it

Matt Orr
N3IVK

Michael,
Also about your setup.  Personally I would go with a professional NMO antenna mount.  I have a 93 Chevy Caprice ex police car, I have 6 antenns on it. All NMO mounts. All of my antenns are Larsen except for the Icom 2800  where I run a Diamond RH 77...i think that's the one.  

I Have three motorola Syntor X9000's in there, Low band (6 and 10 mtrs), VHF and UHF, a Motorola 800 MHZ Spectra B7 and the Icom 2800.  The low band Syntor X9000 gets 2 antenns. One cut for 10 and one cut for 6 meters.

I would go with a permanent mount antenna if you can. I have been happy with mine for the past 4 cars I have owned and never had a leakage problem or a resale value problem.

73's
Matt
N3IVK