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gary in ohio

Explorer
Not quite an expo rig, but my daily driver. 2002 Avalanche with an Icom 706MKGII. Antennas right now is a single 80m hamstick, I have a 12ft whip and tuner that will go on it soon.
 

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Looks Good, how did you mount the faceplate?
The faceplate is mounted into an overhead cubby using some wood molding I had. The attached photo shows the head mount and wood blocking. On the right side of the mount I use a couple of bolts to hold the right side out a bit and gives the head a slant to the driver side. When the face plate is mounted you really cant even see the wood unless you really look for it.
 

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I'm curious about the antenna mount. Is that an NMO to 3/8-24 adapter?

The antenna mount is a Breedlove Jerry makes some fantastic antenna mounts. On the top side its a standard 3/8-24 for an antenna and unlike a lot of mounts who use the same size hold on the bottom this one has 1/2-24 bolt and that bolt has a 3/16 inch screw in it for connection to a coax/feed cable. The insulator is heavy duty milled Delerin. The breedlove mount sets on a stainless steel plate and that is connected to a steal L bracket that matches up with the factory holes where the plastic handhold was mounted.

the pix show the l bracket, the plate and the completed unit before mounting.
 

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The antenna mount is a Breedlove Jerry makes some fantastic antenna mounts. On the top side its a standard 3/8-24 for an antenna and unlike a lot of mounts who use the same size hold on the bottom this one has 1/2-24 bolt and that bolt has a 3/16 inch screw in it for connection to a coax/feed cable. The insulator is heavy duty milled Delerin. The breedlove mount sets on a stainless steel plate and that is connected to a steal L bracket that matches up with the factory holes where the plastic handhold was mounted.

the pix show the l bracket, the plate and the completed unit before mounting.

Thanks for the info. Looks very stout!
 
Very Nice. Where did you find a 12' whip?

The whip is actually a 16ft commercial whip made by ITT industry. Picked it up at the Dayton Hamventon a few years ago, Wish I had several more. Its a nice high quality whip. The whip is consist of four 4ft sections. 3 of the sections use a standard 3/8-24 threads and the top section is smaller, So I can set it up as an 8ft whip, 12ft whip or 16ft whip and use the same base mount. I typically run 3 sections for a 12ft whip fed through an SGG wire tuner. If I am at a fixed location for a while I can put the last 4ft section on. The 16ft even tied down is a bit big to manager on a moving vehicle. The 12ft isnt bad.

A pix of my old tahoe with the whip can be seen here along with an older pix of my blazer with a husler antenna system.
 

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