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Ato Fuse Panel Video Review

This is a demo of the ATO fuse panel installed in a de Tomaso Pantera. Go to...

my mobile installation

By John Shadle, W4PAH

This last September I started a job in RTP, which led to spending more time in my car on a daily basis that my former status as a student bus-riding and the weather can be more than "play radio "on a regular basis. This started an evolution of my reality mobile operations, as well.

My first mobile station consisted of a walkie-talkie Yaesu VX-7R and its antenna rubber duck. The frustrations of an antenna radiating poor led to the installation of an Austin 500C Dual Band (2m 70cm) antenna on a comet-CP 5NMO up on the edge of my trunk.Then I added the headset microphone (VC-27) to the mixture, to avoid having to hold the radio while driving. This worked for a while, but I soon realized I wanted more power radio in my car "permanently".

Since I had already found the antenna side of things, I began my quest for the ideal radio for mobile operations.

My car is a 2000 Honda Civic EX with a manual transmission. Because most of my trip would be short travel to work on my house and back, and because of the need to shift gears, I decided all-mode all-band FM receiver and Double-Bander, instead.After reading the reviews on eHam.net, and based on my positive experience with Yaesu's own platform, I bought an FT-7800R in particular one of the online retailers that includes a separation unit for head. I knew I could not place the transceiver in my entire dashboard, to be able to place most of the platform was also very interesting for me.