Motoring Matilda, Our First Day Out

Finally we got out for a few hours in Matilda.  We had a great times and managed a couple of egg and bacon butties :). The radio worked great and the weather was very kind.

I have started a YouTube channel for our adventures and you can find it here. I will be adding content as we go on and I hope to include our travels as well as radio related videos.

So here is the very first video and there will be more to come.

I hope you enjoy it :)

 

Fitting An Aerial To Our New Motorhome

 

We have just invested in our first motorhome.  An Elddis Autoquest 115.  It is a lovely little 2 berth van, less than 6m long but surprisingly roomy inside.

Of course, our first thought was to get a radio in it.  The problem is, where to mount an aerial?  The vast majority of the body work is not metal, so getting a ground plane is tricky.  I saw a video on YouTube showing a way to do it and decided to have a go.

Basically, the aerial is fitted on the passenger door.  Linda finds it difficult to get in and out this way, so this door won't be opened that much.  Nevertheless, I didn't want wires hanging around.

The mount I decided on was the Diamond K415.  This has 3 axis adjustment.  Perfect for the job.  

I chose the Sharman MC-4MT cable kit to go with it.  This is available in a couple of cable lengths and I decided on 4m.

This has a reasonable tail to get over the door and appears to be well built.  The mount and tail look great from outside.  I needed to make sure that the aerial would not bounce on the bodywork when mobile, so I fitted it down the edge of the door slightly.

The main issue was to keep the cable neat with as minimal a loop into the cab as possible.  The loop has to be close to the hinges to keep it at a minimum length.

I had to think about this for a while but after some testing, I decided on holding the cable to the inside of the door lip using clear silicone.  This worked well and I used Blu-Tack to hold it in place until it set.

Spoiler: I still haven't removed the Blu-Tack ;)

The hardest part of this was having the patience to wait until the silicone set!  I was able to get the cable right down to dashboard level.  This did require copious amounts of Blu-Tack!

Getting the cable up the side of the pillar was really easy and made for a tidy job with only a small loop.

I fitted the radio in the pelmet shelf over the cab.  I had had a 12v point wired in ready and made for a safe and almost invisible installation.

I hope you found this post useful.  Let me know if you have done this and what solution you used.