Threading an Ariel lead down through a Hymer A-Class

[Just smiffy]

Im putting in a panasonic dab radio and a new arial up on the roof front right hand side of my b544 2012, the lead is going to come in behind the bed curtain....

there apears to be two routes i can take down to the dash and to the back of the radio...

1. Down the paneling down along the front side window blind and bring it along the side cupboard thats there Above the gas locker.. (LHD)

2. Down inside the front pillar which goes into the engine bay and would require the head lamp and associated trim to be removed and getting the leads into the bulkhead then to the back of the radio..

now the first one will probably allow the leads to be seen somewhere along the route and the second is a lot of hassle and skinned knuckles.....

has anyone done this and have any further suggestions of routes..?

 

[Speve]

You need to get down into the double floor and then through that until you get to cab joint round passenger side through the side panel up into dashboard. Not easy but the double floor is simple if you have floor hatches down through the van.?

 

[Sus3v]

Haha.
today I must stop trying to do more than one thing at once
I read the thread heading as “Ariel leader”. Now that could have been a bit of a squeeze ?

 

[Geo]

Why not fit a screen mounted Arial, there no worse than a roof mounted one
believe me i have had poor service from both

 

[Jaws]

Why not fit a screen mounted Arial, there no worse than a roof mounted one
believe me i have had poor service from both

A through screen aerial has a 6.8dB loss, and a screen mount one ( foil ) has even more problems.. The element parts are simple not wide enough...

The next bit is boring, so feel free to skip it

It all gets a bit technical, but an aerial is a tuned circuit.. It has a 'centre'point of tune, which for most DAB aerials is set at about 200 megs
And the channels are between 174 and 240 megs.. A huge difference ! ( the wave length at 174 megs is about 1.73 metres and at 240 megs is 1.25 metres )..... To be fair, here in the UK I THINK we only use about 210 to 230 megs but it is still a wide gap !)
Band width of an antenna can be dramatically increased by increasing the 'skin' of the aerial
With a foil element ( and a thin one at that ) it will only have a very narrow point of tune.

There are ways to make them perform better but the solutions are all a tad messy

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[Lenny HB]

The pillar route will give a shorter cable run and the shorter the cable the less signal loss. Don't forget to fit a ground plane if fitting it on the cab GRP section. If fitting further back the Hymer is aluminium under the GRP but need to check it's grounded probably won't be.

 

[Just smiffy]

Ive gone down a pillar from the side window so all good there.... sorted all the wiring and just the fettling of the fascia now....

Then the dreaded drilling a hole in the roof...?

I’ve mounted the arial on a Ali box which will be stuck down and sealed with sikaflex to cover the roof hole and will ground it.... the arial is also FM...