Car with antenna

I’ve been operating for a couple of months with a Diamond MR77, a UHF/VHF mag mount. It’s been great as a temporary solution, but not ideal for sustained use because the coax cable must be routed carefully or else get pinched in the door.

So today, I took a permanent step to advertising my car as a mobile ham shack and installed an NMO mount. It’s a hard mount that requires drilling a hole in the car roof and routing the cable behind trim panels. That made it a much more extensive car project than I usually get into, but I decided to take it on. I have a 2010 Ford Fusion; getting the headliner loose in the back required removing the interior trim panels for the entire B pillars and C pillars, which was no small task. I thought I also needed to remove the rear dome light, and broke both retainer tabs in the process. It turns out it’s sandwiched around the headliner, not attached to the roof, so there was no need to take it apart.

With the NMO mount installed, I’m using Diamond NR72BNMO on top. Overall, I’m happy with the result! I haven’t had a chance to test if it has better performance than the mag mount, but it’s already a big improvement in usability terms.