Professional installer recommendation?

This is the place to discuss generalized scanner questions and information for San Diego County. Whether it's radios, antennas, or other general scanner related topics, you can talk about it here.
fotoguy
Posts: 46
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2004 1:31 am

My take on the hole saw.

Post by fotoguy »

I use a greenlee hole punch VERY often and find it has a tendency to bind and not cut very clean on thin sheet metal ie: roof. This is What I would use and have used on hundreads of NMO antena installs.
http://www.antenex.com/c_search.asp?txt ... 9+Hole+Saw
You down even need to remove the headliner in most cases however new car/trucks/suvs including mine have alot of eletrical, air bag and air ducts running in the headliner area use caution.

But as with everything if you take the time to plan it correctly you minimize the chance of having any problems.
IPN911
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 12:53 am

Post by IPN911 »

I used a Fiskars compass to draw a perfect circle and cut it out with a Ginsu paring knife. Seemed to work well. 8)
w6pix
Posts: 338
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 4:00 pm

Post by w6pix »

IPN911 wrote:I used a Fiskars compass to draw a perfect circle and cut it out with a Ginsu paring knife. Seemed to work well. 8)
What? a comedian? LOL
Brian
Posts: 1455
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 8:54 pm

Re: NMO Mounts

Post by Brian »

318 wrote: Day Wireless. (My personal favorite San Diego area radio shop.)
So much for a good radio shop(Day Wireless) ;)

Tryed to order a new power box(Astron) for a base motorola radio(M1225) and they would have to order it and have it on monday!

Fisher Wireless could have the part out Friday afternoon TODAY :-)
Great Service!
Just like the great radio Service Fisher has! because Day Wireless piggy back on Fisher Wireless Passport system down in this area.
astrodanco
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2004 11:04 am

Post by astrodanco »

I finally installed the permanent NMO antenna mounts on my car. I did it myself because the labor estimates from the pros I contacted were way too high for my blood. Messing with the headliner ("we gotta drop it") is very time consuming ('we have to remove and put back all that trim").

I used the special 3/4" Antenex hole saw. It's was inexpensive. It also did a fine job all by itself. No need whatsoever to mess with a hole punch. I guess the hole saw is toast now though because, despite the warning notice that comes with the hole saw, I didn't want to mess with drilling oil so didn't use any. Drilling oil wouldn't seem to be too beneficial when the hole saw is only cutting for a matter of seconds anyway.

In order to not make a mess and to catch any hot metal that might melt my headliner, I placed a pizza pan below each cut to catch the shavings and the plug. I didn't pull the headliner all the way down, but only far enough to observe the lay of the land (obstructions), slide in the pizza pan, fish it out, and fish through the coax.

Drilling was by far the easy part. It was all over in less than 15 seconds. And just like the pros indicated, the hardest and most time consuming part by far was putting the trim back afterwards. The next hardest part was removing trim in the first place. In my case, this was all made trickier by side impact airbags being in the headliner. No way did I want to unknowingly compromise those air bags. The presence of the air bags severly limited options for routing the coax. For instance, my B and C pillars (I have a wagon) were totally off limits. Only the A and D pillars were available.

With the way I putz around, it took me four hours to do everything, including route the coax cables all the way to their final destinations and install new solder clamp BNC connectors.

BTW, I used "low loss" solid-core RG-8X coax. I took care not to bend it too much. It was also flexible enough to not be a problem. What the heck, it didn't really cost any more, so why not.

A tip: If you use a pizza pan like I did, don't use a teflon coated one. Tape won't stick to teflon but it does stick to headliner, so rigging something up in advance to fish the pan back out from under your headliner can be problematic. I ended up drilling small holes in the sides of the pan and sliding my fish tape through them for a firm grip. I then used the fish tape as a "pull string" to remove the pan afterwards. Of course this is not a problem if you drop your whole headliner all the way down.
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