XTL 5000 high power in a Mini Cooper

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spatzek
Posts: 29
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2001 4:00 pm

XTL 5000 high power in a Mini Cooper

Post by spatzek »

Greetings:

I'm downsizing from my 2002 Ford Excursion to a 2door Mini Cooper Hardtop. I have a full power 110 watt VHF remote mount with an 05 head. How low can I take the RF output safely? I'm reluctant to operate more than 40 watts or so due to the major computerization of the new car. I'll ask the techs at the dealer to see if Mini has any guidance. I also have a vhf dash mount, but there is no where to mount the dash mount Head. The remote head is just do-able. I'm not roof mounting antennas but using l brackets on the opposite front corners of the hood. I can easily use a seat bolt bracket stick to put the head on, and will use this for a my ham dualbander control head as well. The two antennas will b separated by a hoods width, which should be plenty.

I'm looking for ideas on solving this install

Thanks in advance for your help.

Paul Spatzek KL7PS
mmckenna
Posts: 217
Joined: Wed Aug 28, 2002 7:01 pm
What radios do you own?: AM/FM with 8 track.

Re: XTL 5000 high power in a Mini Cooper

Post by mmckenna »

I know this is a few months old, but I just saw it and it reminded me of a guy who I used to work with that had a Mini Cooper. He put a Yaesu screwdriver antenna on it and was running 100 watts HF, 50 watts VHF and UHF.

It looked a little odd, but it worked well. He removed the satellite/AM/FM antenna off the back. He installed the SO-239 mount in it's place with some light fabrication of a mount. The Yaesu screwdriver antenna (ATAS-120, if I recall correctly) worked pretty well. He had an older remote head Icom HF/VHF/UHF rig that did 100 watts on HF and 50 on VHF and UHF. He didn't have any issues I was aware of.
In fact, I recall him working someone in Japan on 20 meters while we were driving somewhere. The car got some looks, though.
"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."
RFguy
Posts: 1357
Joined: Wed Dec 21, 2005 6:17 am

Re: XTL 5000 high power in a Mini Cooper

Post by RFguy »

looking at my old XTL5000 price catalogs, it shows the 110 watt model as 25-110 watts, so you should be able to program it to 25-watts output.

Price page indicates:
XTL 5000 VHF MOBILE, 25-110 WATT, 136-174 MHZ, MODEL M20KTS9PW1_N, FCC ID AZ492FT3808

I would run dual shield cable, try to keep it away from other cabling as much as possible, and keep the reflected power to a minimum.
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