Mobile installs in Prius
Just got a 2005 Prius last Saturday and am now in the process of relocating my extensive mobile setup from my Passat TDI wagon. The previous installation consisted of a Kenwood D700 APRS radio, a TM742 6-2-450 tribander and a Yaesu FT-100, along with a laptop computer, my homebrew system console and my "Mobile LiveCAM" SSTV setup.
Probably in the next week, I will take deep breath, take a Motorola holesaw in hand, and make a hole in the center of the roof for an NMO mount for the Comet SB14 6M/2M/UHF tribander. I anticipate placing a bunch of radio gear on a board in the hidden cargo area under the trunk floor. I plan to place an Optima Bluetop deep-cycle battery in there with an isolator to the main 12V battery (It's so nice having it in the rear near the radio gear!).
A ham friend of mine, Dennis KB6C, devised a really cheap and simple way to create two no-holes antenna mounts in the hatch area. He made up a couple of L-shaped aluminum plates; the horizontal part is about 2" square and can accomodate standard permanent-type NMO mounts while the vertical part is about an inch and a half high by 2" wide. He unscrewed the two bolts anchoring the bottom ends of the hatchback lifter pistons, sandwiched the plates between the body and the lifter ends, and then re-inserted the bolts.
He says it's solid enough to support tall VHF/UHF ants and even low-drag HF ants like Ham Sticks. He says he hasn't noticed much HF noise with a casual test with a world band radio, except during regenerative braking. If my tests confirm this, I plan to stick a TS2000 in the hidden trunk area and use the optional remote control head. I will then have just the two identical control heads up front. (The D700 and TS2000 use the IDENTICAL heads - the different displays and functions of the pushbuttons are determined soley by the radio they are connected to.)
For HF, I will probably go with a racheting adjustable antenna mount that came from an SGC SmartTuner QMS attached to the left rear sidewall just behind the gas filler lid. This will require drilling 4 #10 holes through the side wall to bolt it on, and a fifth larger hole (about 1/2") for a feed-through insulator to bring the high voltage tuner feed line out from an Icom AH4 auto-coupler inside the left rear corner of the trunk.
WA8LMF Mobile SSTV LiveCAM
http://webs.lanset.com/wa8lmf/ham
No Holes "Gravity Mount" Mobile Computer Table
http://webs.lanset.com/wa8lmf/table/index.htm