Roof Cable Managment

[Marius1195]

Put a mag antenna on and absolutely hate the cable sloppiness. It's a mag mounted Nagoya with the cable attached to the base. It's on my Jeep Patriot and without popping my roof rack off I can't feed the cable under it to make it cleaner. It is also fed through my rear door as well. I'd like to secure it better and definitely look better. Any suggestions? 

 

 

Walter WRNN509

[jgillaspy]

I don't think there is much of a way to clean up a mag-mount antenna. You will always have the wire showing. You might want to look at using a lip-mount and mount it on the upper side of your rear hatch. You can then route the cable in through the hatch and hide it under the interior trim. Just make sure to stay cleat of any curtain air bags. Also make sure you get one with a sealed mount cable.

JG

[wayoverthere]

It's definitely not a clean look on my truck.

For the Patriot, is it possible to park it inside the rails toward the back, to minimize the amount of cable run on the roof? Thinking there should be enough room to keep it from being too close to the bars and cause issues

On the car, I put it just off center on the trunk toward the drivers' side, and tucked as much as I could along the trunk edge outside the seal, to bring it up and across the seal at the bottom. Tempted to move it further off center, throw a big antenna on, and just hide it in the trunk when not in use (that's the beater car, and I just take a handheld along)

[Marius1195]

Thanks for the suggestions! I should have made it clearer, I am wanting to do something about the loose look of the cable. White Jeep with black cable, something I decided I can live with.   I was hoping to pass the cable through the rack and use it as a tie down to get a cleaner look. Right now the antenna is in the vehicle centerline and about in the middle of the rear door. The cable then has to be run around the front of the rack and routed backwards a few inches to get inside the door frame. I can't get it to lay flat due to tension and the roof is grooved as well, resulting in a not so nice look. I did look at going through the hatch but decided against it due to the routing length that would have made me change from the antenna I wanted. All good though, it doesn't look horrible, just wanting a cleaner look if possible. Thanks again!!

[wayoverthere]

Not familiar with all the shapes involved with the rack...would it be possible to take the bars and end caps off, and route the cable inside the rack, and bring it out near your entry point?

Alternately, would offsetting the antenna further back make using the hatch feasible? (Gmrs frequencies don't need a huge ground plane). If I wanted to clean it up that much, I might even grab an inline connector and another piece of cable if that would make the hatch workable. Lmr240 or rg8x pigtails in the 6' aren't horribly expensive, though more cable means a little more loss.

I might also try to find some white electric tape and wrap the portion of the cable outside, too.

[PACNWComms]

I had a similar problem, having a silver car, but put a black lip NMO (new Motorola) type mount, and had a bit of contrast that I was not sure if I would like on this car. I already had the antenna and lip mount in black, and would have had to buy the chrome/silver version if I wanted it to blend better. However, the car has black trim anyway, and the exposed coax is minimal, and secured to the inside trunk brackets well. 

As for excess coax routing, I almost always go down to the floor, and run the coax under the inside of the rocker panels (or sometimes under the console in the center), there are always trim strips in plastic that come up easily at the sides of the vehicle, often containing factory wiring and are nowhere near airbags or their associated sensors. I am more of a function over aesthetics person, but also wanted to not have an antenna and coax so visible that it would be noticed. However, in this configuration most people think it is factory AM/FM, only one amateur radio type noticed and said it looked "nice". Good luck on your install and routing of cables.

[gortex2]

They make drill bits. NMO mount in the roof is the best mount you can have.

 

[Marius1195]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:42 AM, wayoverthere said:

Not familiar with all the shapes involved with the rack...would it be possible to take the bars and end caps off, and route the cable inside the rack, and bring it out near your entry point?

Alternately, would offsetting the antenna further back make using the hatch feasible? (Gmrs frequencies don't need a huge ground plane). If I wanted to clean it up that much, I might even grab an inline connector and another piece of cable if that would make the hatch workable. Lmr240 or rg8x pigtails in the 6' aren't horribly expensive, though more cable means a little more loss.

I might also try to find some white electric tape and wrap the portion of the cable outside, too.

I wasn't aware of the plane not being as significant; that was the reasoning behind the location I used. I can move it and get a better route easiy enough. When you mentioned white electrical tape my immediate though was Unicorns and Bigfoot, does it really exist?!  Thanks for the tips. 

Heading to Stl today. I am pretty excited to see the difference the roof antenna makes. I live by a farily decent sized lake in the sticks and there isn't much traffic within 30-40 miles of me. 

[Coffeemaker]

On 1/26/2022 at 5:16 PM, Marius1195 said:

Put a mag antenna on and absolutely hate the cable sloppiness. It's a mag mounted Nagoya with the cable attached to the base. It's on my Jeep Patriot and without popping my roof rack off I can't feed the cable under it to make it cleaner. It is also fed through my rear door as well. I'd like to secure it better and definitely look better. Any suggestions? 

 

 

Walter WRNN509

Hi Walter!

I do about the same thing on a CX-5.  The mag mount is pieced near the center of the roof for max ground plane effect.  I pull the cable to the nearest roof rail, hold it with a strip of Velcro and then route beside the rail to the rear hatch.  From the ground, there is nothing to see.  If you have cross bars, you could run the cable under one of them.  You'd be better off if the crossbar was not metal.