Batboard

Okay, kind of a strange question, but here it goes...

The Chevy truck I am looking at has two antennas on it, one for OnStar and one for GPS. Now, can either antenna be used for another type of application such as scanner antenna or even a cell phone antenna?

I know nothing about this kind of stuff so I thought I'd ask here.

Tim

if you cut off the old connectors, and add new ones to fit your equipment ends, then yes....HOWEVER, you will only get reception in those bands. Considering how specifically those units are tuned, you will get very little past a couple of kHz in either direction, not really worth the work.

Well, we don't really have a forum for this, but it definitely doesn't belong in the computer section. Moving to O/T vehicle installations...

Todd

Not gonna happen. I know some of the APRS guys have hacked the Onstar GPS to get NMEA strings out of it, but that's about it. The satellite antenna will have a downconverter in the antenna itself and will run low-frequency along the cable (this is how they get away with such tiny coax).

Drill hole, install mount, connect antenna, terminate to radio. Easy.

I plan on installing another antenna, but I was hoping to utilize at least one of the two plastic lumps on the roof that are sort of worthless without paying a lot of extra money for their services...

Tim

Forget using the satellite radio antenna. You might be able to make a GPS work on the GPS antenna (assuming it's nothing non-standard... it's definitely active and will require DC bias to run the amplifier) but that's about it.

Why would u Want to Disable you XM

XM rules OnA and ron and Fez

SilasGore1 wrote:Okay, kind of a strange question, but here it goes...

The Chevy truck I am looking at has two antennas on it, one for OnStar and one for GPS. Now, can either antenna be used for another type of application such as scanner antenna or even a cell phone antenna?

I know nothing about this kind of stuff so I thought I'd ask here.

Tim

I'm pretty sure one antenna is for OnStar and the other is for XM Radio.

The drivers side antenna is for Onstar and GPS. The right side is the XM antenna.

Don't bother trying to mod them for anything, its not worth it. Terry is correct that the only known good mod for most GM radios is the GPS/NMEA mod. However, when you do this, your OnStar will not work properly if you use the service (location information will not be available if you crash, etc).

Company called Sti-Co makes antennas to replace AM-FM and adds your desired band to them

I currently use the GPS/Onstar antenna on my 06 Ford SD. The GPS has the standard SMA, however the Onstar hada funky connector. Cut it off and crimped on an TNC for my MDX Edacs Radio. Works great on low power. XM antenna hooked to my XM Radio.