Mobile

I run a Yaesu FT-857D as my mobile rig. I custom made the dash mount from a piece of 26 gauge sheet metal. This way I could have my stereo and radio next to each other. The 857 is actually remotely mounted, and the actual radio is behind the seat screwed into the back of the cab.

I custom bent and welded a bracket for my mobile antenna (MFJ-1412). It isn't the stiffest bracket, but it serves its purpose. I ran into problems with bad SWR's with this setup. A half wave antenna needs either good grounding plane or no grounding plane at all. I ended up with a capacitive connection to the grounding plane due to the paint on the bracket, which caused all sorts of problems and finally ended up burning the finals out of my Kenwood TM-733 before I tracked the problem down.

I had to solder a wire from the NMO mount to the body because it was intermittently causing problems. Once I got all my problems figured out, it has worked like a dream. Another advantage is the height, which is low enough not to catch in trees when I drive under them.

I have installed a 40m HamStick on the hitch of my truck. I have yet to make any solid contacts with it. I may have to move it to a stake mount, but again I was attempting to avoid trees.

I installed BlueCat for my FT-857D and it has been wonderful. My phone or tablet uses bluetooth and the RepeaterBook app to communicate with the radio. I can click on a repeater in the app and the radio sets itself to that frequency, offset, and PL tone.

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