Routing coax cable for HF radio

Hi John,
Mounted mine into a Troopy, cable ran from bull bar back under the grill along the engine bay and through a grommet in the firewall. From there it went behind the 'kick panel' along the floor (under the plastic bit that holds the carpet/vinyl) and finally connected to the main unit behind the seat panel.
Point is, it was along side a lot of the vehicle's wiring and I never noticed any interference.
Just make sure your antenna and main unit have a good earth and you should be OK.
Gawd, just starting to snow here!
Cheers,
Dennis

John,
Just a hint. If you have trouble pushing the antenna cable through the grommet, push the plastic body of a bic biro through it first and then feed the cable into that. The biro body can then be removed by pulling it over the free end of the cable.
For what its worth.
Jon W

You'll minimise chances of problem on the various frequencies you operate on, if you keep it as far away as possible from any other wiring.

Hi John,
I also have the same model only in 4.5lt.
I have HF and VHF / UHF installed.

I ran my cables (Antenna) along the passenger side through the rubber grommet with no problems.

Make sure you run a separate earth from the mounting point (Base) of antenna mount as the Alloy B/Bars are not a good earth or contact.

I ran a twin earth from that point and connected to the body and 1 to the chassis.

So no interference problems, but with a Diesel you might have to earth everything including the exhaust.

Cheers

Both Barrett and Codan advise that the wiring should be kept as seperate as possible from the rest of the HF wiring.
I used to install them, usually ran the power on one side and antenna connections the other.
The real biggie is to keep everything away from the control head cable as it seems to be the most prone to interference.
As has been said earths are the biggest cause of problems. Remove at least one bolt from the bullbar mounts to the chassis, clean surfaces back to bare metal and reinstall the bolt. Just because your driving lights work through the poor grounding of the bullbar to chassis doesn't mean the HF will.
Don't forget to connect the ground wire between the transmitter and the vehicle body and never connect the negative power lead to the negative battery terminal. The negative power lead should be connected to the body/chassis end of the the main battery negative.
The reason for this is that if the main negative/ground connection to the battery becomes very poor the starting current when you start the motor takes the path of least resistance through the HF! They never work again!! This applies to anything that has a decent size cable connected to the battery.

Hi John,

Also having good quality coax makes a big difference as well. I have used RG214 which is double shielded and extremely low loss but is quite thick. Coax such as RG213, RG223 and Cellfoil are highly recommended. I have run mine from front left bullbar accross the front and then along the right side of the engine bay to the transceiver under the drivers seat. I have encased mine in harnessflex as well to stop any rubbing of the outer insulation.

I get no interference at all whilst driving but I have a mechanical diesel. The coax is bundled next to a whole host of other cables as well.

I prefere good qaulity Andrews or Huber & Suhner crimp connectors as well over soldered. I find soldered ones have too much flux residue left after soldering and it can be corosive in the right environment. Seal all external connections with self amalgamating tape as well to keep water out. Oh and earth, earth, earth.

Regards
David

Hi John,
I have all the cables running together( next to each other) The only one I had any problems with was the power cable for the fridge. Caused interferance when fridge cut in & out. Moved fridge power to the other side of cabe & problen went away.
Vince

It's best to keep the wiring as separate as possible. We had a Toyota Camry wagon some years ago with HF, VHF, UHF & 27 Meg fitted (tight squeeze). The coax's ran in a bundle into the cargo area from antennae mounted on front, except HF which was towbar mounted. They ran through the engine bay and somewhere, caused some interference to the BCM or something like that. One day, while making a turn, the wrong turn signal to come on. The driver was involved in an accident that ended with the wagon being a write off.

After investigation it was found that the coax's were interfering with the vehicle circuitry. Go figure. BTW, driver not hurt.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I'll run the power cables on the opposite side to the antenna cable, but other than that it should be OK. I have a mechanical diesel, so hopefully won't have too much interference to worry about. I have earthed the antenna base from the bullbar to the body, and the transmitter to the body, and cleaned up the earth connection from the battery to the body. With a bit of luck, it will all work OK :-)
John