Dare I drill the roof...
 

Hello. I have a 2001 4.4 X5 with the glass sliding roof. I will mount a communication radio (actually a ham radio) in the rear right side. There is plenty of room there. (No subwoofer). But the problem is the antenna. Fairly high power (50W max), so glass antenna is no option. Anyone who has dared drill the roof in the middle, say 15 inches from the roof spolier? The car has radio, phone, nav and TV, so I guess there is already 4 antennea in the roof spoiler? Also, will there be problems routing the antenna cable down the C-(what-do-you-call-it-in-english...) with respect to the airbags (ITS) system?
Postings in ham radio forums came up zip...
Thanks for any help! (Any hams out there..?)
73 de SM0JWX
Rikard in Stockholm, Sweden

Top Gun,
I was at Ham Radio Outlet in Anaheim today with my X5 and they referred me to their preferred installer.
After visiting him, it doesn't appear that there is room between the sunroof motor and the back of the headliner to drill a hole and install an NMO (or similar) mount. There 'may' be room off to the sides, but this would require complete removal of the headliner to check out.

Have you come up with any other options?
It looks like the only place is the lip of the hatch (the flat spot just below the glass) where a Diamond- type grip mount could catch ground (but I don't like the way this looks).

Which radio are you installing and where are you putting the control head?

73,

KA6ZDM

Hello - thanks for your reply! I will install a Kenwood TM-D700 2m/70cm dual bander, primarily for APRS use. Have you tried/been active on APRS? I'm also a glider pilot, and we have done some experiments with APRS trackers in gliders.
Yes, I guess drilling the roof might not be an option, for various reasons. One option I will try to explore is a rail mount. There are some rail mounts on the market, and they might fit the bill. Problems are of course to get a decent ground and also to rout the the feeder in somewhere.
I will put the control head on a plastic cell phone-type mounting bracket monted across the ventilation outlet just to the right of the steering wheel. Not ideal, but at least I think it will work, and not pull the vision to far from the road. When running APRS, it is a bit 'visual', in that position reports come in as a 'beep' and the call sign, range and approx. bearing to the other guy. Of course my radio needs to know where it is as well. It has a GPS input terminal. At first, I toyed with the idea of 'hacking' the bus in the car to get hold of GPS/NMEA info. But after getting to know the car better (have had it about 2 months) I realized that getting another GPS (or rather using a small bluetooth GPS I alrady have) would be far easier. So the plan is to throw the Bluetooth GPS in the front window and have a small Bluetooth 'dongle' on the serial GPS input terminal on the D700. I plan to mount the D700 in the rear, right side. Some space there. Speakers is also a problem... I really need two, because you can have simulateous RX on band A and B configurable in several different ways. Here I was thinking sacrificing the sunglass holder in the roof... Pretty neat if I can get them there...
Do you have any ham radio mounted in your X5 yet?
OK, sorry for long answer, I you would like to answer off-list, my email is: [email protected]
I fairly OK on www.qrz.com also, if you would like to look me up!
Regards and 73!
SM0JWX/Rikard
Stockholm
Sweden

Thanks,
email is on the way.

Finally, the TM-D700 is in place in the X5! I will try to post some pictures later.
73 de SM0JWX