Mobile Radio Remote Control Head Cable Distance

[mbrun]

Some GMRS and amateur mobile radios (perhaps even some commercial rigs) have the ability to remotely locate the radio control head. It seems that the manufacturers may supply standard cables for doing this that are in the range of perhaps 10-20 feet. Probably sufficient for the typical automotive installation.

 

I am curious who of you has experimented with how long you can make and use these cables before you started to achieve undesirable results and what radio you experimented with.

 

This may be more of an idle curiosity than anything, but it does have a practical application.

 

Consider an application where there may be an ideal location to mount an antenna at one’s home, but the ideal location for the radio is 150 cable-feet away from that. That would be a lot of expense for quality low-loss feed-line. Now lets say that the radio electronics could actually be mounted say 50’ from the antenna and that the control head, mic and speakers were remotely mounted 100’ away from that and then interconnected with inexpensive Category 5 grade network cable.

 

While you can be certain that I will experiment with this at some point, I thought I would like to tap this group for existing first-hand experiences.

 

Regards to all.

 

 

Michael

WRHS965

KE8PLM

[gortex2]

Its called tone remote or local control. Been done for decades on LMR/Public Safety applications. My home base radio is in my attic hooked to 12' of LDF4 hardline then CAT5 to a switch to remotes on the main floor and garage.

[OldRadioGuy]

I like your thinking of getting the radio closer to the antenna.

It's the way to go if you can make it work.

Low loss coax is expensive and phone wire is cheap.

 

The remote head cable on my Yeasu ham mobile is just phone cable and I think this is typical.

I would bet the signals are not very hi freq. and there would not be any issues with loss.

So I would think you could easily get away with 50'... and maybe a lot more. 

 

The only way to know is to test it though.

I think you can use standard phone wire and connectors.

So I think you could probably buy or make the cable pretty easily.

Even Home Depot sells the cable and connectors.

 

Vince

[mbrun]

I like your thinking of getting the radio closer to the antenna.

It's the way to go if you can make it work.

Low loss coax is expensive and phone wire is cheap.

 

The remote head cable on my Yeasu ham mobile is just phone cable and I think this is typical.

I would bet the signals are not very hi freq. and there would not be any issues with loss.

So I would think you could easily get away with 50'... and maybe a lot more.

 

The only way to know is to test it though.

I think you can use standard phone wire and connectors.

So I think you could probably buy or make the cable pretty easily.

Even Home Depot sells the cable and connectors.

 

Vince

I have radio, cable, connectors etc.. to do just that. The radio manufacture supplies Cat5e cable. I just thought I would tap this group to see what experiences others may have had and with what radio models.

 

Thinking of trying 100 and 200’ to see what results I get.

 

Thanks.

 

 

Michael

WRHS965

KE8PLM

[mbrun]

Its called tone remote or local control. Been done for decades on LMR/Public Safety applications. My home base radio is in my attic hooked to 12' of LDF4 hardline then CAT5 to a switch to remotes on the main floor and garage.

Thanks.

 

Could you provide me a link to the radio and remote you are using?

 

 

Michael

WRHS965

KE8PLM

[gortex2]

https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/p25-products.html