Well back in mid-February or so I bought a Kenwood TM-V71A VHF/UHF mobile amateur radio for my truck and have been waiting for a day off with nice weather to actually install it. You would think that with a full sized 4x4 truck with a huge crew cab it would be easy to find room to mount a small radio. Yesterday I found that it was easier said than done however I did get it installed. It has a removal faceplate/control head so I had two mounting locations to consider. The main radio unit was going to be mounted on the driver's side of the centre console but that proved to be a bit of a problem in that while driving my calf would be just resting on one corner of the unit. If I wear my knee brace it would rub quite hard against it and possible catch on it if I had to lift my foot off the gas peddle in a hurry. Not good. I ended up mounting the main unit on the passenger's side of the console and the control head on the upper right corner of the instrument cluster allowing me to access the buttons and still keep both hands on the wheel. Right now power is taken from a 12 volt power point outlet of which the truck has FOUR of them. These are a bit different from a regular cigarette lighter outlet. So far so good but I will eventually wire it directly to the battery. Right now I need the key on to power the radio. The antenna is a Comet CA2x4SR that is about 20 years old but still working great. It is mounted on a home made mount on the rear of the box and is held on by existing bolts visible when the tailgate is down. No radio checks yet as supper was ready just as I finished but I may check it out later today. Now I need to familiarize myself with the multitude of functions this thing has.
I guess that depends on where you live. 2m SSB is used quite a bit in San Antonio, Austin, Houston and further South.
