Flat, through window antennae cable? GMRS

cookiedough

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Phx, AZ
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Dave
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Petersen
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I'm looking at the Midlands MTX275, have a Tacoma, but don't want to put a hole in my sheetmetal. I see the DX Engineering MGC50 flat cable, is that a usable product for the GMRS range at 15 watts?
 
Try it with the original antenna first, it has plenty of cable to run under seats and out vent/wiring/drainage holes.
 
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It would work ok and appears to meet all the requirements but I would expect some signal loss especially at the frequencies GMRS uses.
There's bound to be a grommet in the firewall you could run coax through and do a fender mount antenna, a couple of screw holes on the backside of the fender won't hurt anything.
 
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Comet antennas makes a nice clamp on hood mount (CP-5NMO) that is adjustable in all directions to plumb the antenna, and uses a short section of spaghetti coax that fits nicely between the hood and fender. Also the body of the coax fitting unscrews so you can thread the coax through a small hole or grommet in the fire wall without the need for cutting the end off and soldering on a new one. Have a couple of them on my WJ for many years and seem to hold up well. Tried the thru the window coax a long time ago, and was not happy with performance and did not last too long before it got damaged. Was also annoying having it hanging.
 
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