Installing a 2-meter ham radio in the Gen5

OK, this will likely have a VERY small target audience! This will be in three parts, the antenna, radio module and control head. There are things I'm going to change at some point due to "lessons learned", but I did get the radio installed and working nicely.

THE ANTENNA:
With no metal on the top of the car, it clearly needs to be a glass-mount antenna. I chose the wired vs capacative coupling type. I got a capacative one for my Gen1 Prius and wasn't very happy with it. Given this is a hatchback, running a wire is easy.

My choice of location turned out to not be great and do plan on moving it, but that requires a kit with new stickers. I lined up the antenna with the cars sharkfin and with hindsight mounted it too close. As you can see from the pictures, the antenna needs to be angled back a bit to not hit the sharkfin and the base wire needs to point back instead of forward. Oops, but fixable once I get the kit. I will move the antenna a bit further down the glass and offset it to allow it to be vertical with the gate closed and not run into the sharkfin when open.

Running the coax is super-easy since the wire runs almost entirely "outside" the weather seal until way down by the bottom of the trunk area. Back there I figure water isn't going to be an issue.

Pictures below:

 

RADIO HEAD:

This turned out to be surprisingly easy! With the battery and antenna in the back, this was the logical place to put the core part of the radio.

Hooking up to the battery was pretty straight forward. The tricky bit was finding lugs that would fit the screw terminals. I ended up getting some generic ones from the local hardware store and drilling them out a bit to fit over the bolts. I really wanted to get extra nuts and not mess with the Toyota-installed ones at all, but have no idea of the nut size/threads, etc. So, opted to remove the bolts, put on the screw terminal and then put the nuts back. I didn't mess up any of the car electronics doing so, so YAY!

Under the foam is lots of space for a radio. I was looking at mounting options right next to the battery where there is plenty of space, but then realized that a space in the foam itself was a perfect fit! The concern clearly is if there is enough ventilation for the fan. For my Gen1, the radio was in the center storage console. While slightly larger it didn't have much venting either and it barely got warm, so I'll check it out after some heavy use, but suspect that is going to be an OK location. It is nice and snug and clearly well padded!

Wires from the antenna and battery were super-easy--and yes, the cables need dressing. After a bit more use convincing myself the location is good, I will take care of that. The three wires to the main cabin are for the control head, microphone, and speaker. They just exit off the left and head up toward the front.

The core radio is the same height as the recession in the foam so the trunk cover fits completely flat over it.

Pictures below:

 

THE CONTROL HEAD:

My main goal for the cabin electronics was to not block what limited window area there was. Compared to my Gen1, the windows are tiny! The best place for the control head that worked for me was by the A pillar.

A place for the speaker was even harder to sort out! With spousal approval the place we decided on was behind the infotainment display. It isn't very visible from inside but pretty visible from outside. One future upgrade will be to find some smaller black cable for the speaker and with that, be able to hide it a lot better. Can't do much about the speaker itself though.

The microphone was pretty easy too. The extension cable kit uses telephone connectors and a Y adapter. Kinda cheesy, but works fine. I just mounted the adapter to the back of the center console storage compartment and that was the junction between the microphone cable and extension cable.

Wiring from the control head and speaker was pretty easy to stick into the rubber seals along the front of the driver side door. From there the wires fit nicely inside the plastic parts safely away from any potential foot traffic. Along the door itself the wires are currently just stuffed under the floor mat edge, so pretty soon I will see if I can dislodge the step molding enough to get the wires more safely tucked away. It is a similar story for the wires along the bottom of the back driver side door. Looking at the plastic around the rear seats I think there are some better routing possibilities too. I plan on some more exploring to find some better options.

 

There you have it! While it works, there are clearly some areas that I will be tweaking a bit to improve things. I should have done a more thorough test of the antenna location with sticky tape or something before using the irreversible sticker. That was my biggest oops and fixing it will take time to get the fixit kit. I like the locations of everything and better wire dressing will be an ongoing set of tweaks. I'm still a bit nervous yanking things off of door sills and such, but will get that courage soon enough.

will

 

Tovli: Yea, radio work is definitely secondary to driving. The major use though is APRS (new fangled thingy) which operates autmatically. Then, just the national calling frequency for road trips. For my Gen1 I did it right, drilling a hole in the center of the roof.

will

 

Leadfoot: Yea, some kind of black wire would be a lot less conspicuous. Hopefully I can find a crevice closer to the Infotainment display too to run it from. That speaker cord is all I had for round 1. Also, I can make it pretty small gauge if I only use it for the last foot or so and stick with the heavier wire for most of the run to minimize losses.

Ooh, I like the idea of a black wrap for the speaker! That should to a great job of making it less conspicuous.

will

 

Tovli: Not sure if you know about APRS, but to the horror of folk who place a high value on privacy, one use is position reporting. The link below is a website that allows access to data people transmit and the link is for the info for my callsign.

https://aprs.fi/#!call=a%2FN0XGA-9&timerange=86400&tail=86400

Family find it handy to see my progress when I'm coming to visit them. For airport pickups it is also handy for timing. When on my secret spy missions I just turn the radio off.

will

 

For giggles, below is the APRS data from my first trip out of town in my Gen5. A bit over 100 miles with the first 50 on relatively flat interstate then a fun windy mountain road into the Rockies. On the interstate I had fun playing with the all the driver assistance features and for the windy mountain roads turned automation off and had more fun than should be allowed in a Prius. I've been driving Prii for 20+ years, so this Gen5 is a pretty radical fun departure from what I am used to!

On the APRS side, each red dot is when a position broadcast got received by someone and relayed to the APRS servers. While hard to tell, the only non-tiny spots that didn't have coverage were two canyons, one between Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs and another between Divide and Lake George. APRS coverage is amazing!

Fun story: At the last stoplight on the steep (6% grade) pass up toward Manitou Springs I ended up at the line. I had to floor it! (Yea, battery was drained and I forgot to get out of ECO mode, but hey) It was still impressive and I left the car next to me way behind. I was feeling pretty good and about to get in my proper place in the slow lane after reaching the speed limit. Turns out there was a Mustang Mach E behind me who clearly felt the need to remind me I still had a Prius. He blew past me, but I'm pretty sure not nearly as decisively as he expected. Only wish I hadn't let up on the gas until after he'd passed me so he would have gotten a fairer comparison.


will

 

@HikeBike : yea, I've had the FT-400 for a while and considered the upgrade just for the fewer number of wires, but decided to keep my old rig instead. The FT-500 looks nice.

I didbkill.my battery forgetting to turn off the radio once, so @pramodhrachuri s suggestion I'd a very good one!

Will