[TowerTalk] Honda HF antennas

[Robert Tortajada]

I checked with a friend who put a HF antenna onto a MDX

Bob:

I went through a bunch of research when I installed the IC-706M2G and 
High-Sierra 1800 in the MDX, and this is what I found out:

1) Honda does not publish RFI installation guidelines for their cars, 
and that is mainly because Honda cars are not sold in fleet sales for 
public safety use, as with Ford and GM, etc..

2) Honda does do extensive RFI testing of their vehicles, and their 
vehicles are generally very RF quiet.  The purpose of the testing is 
mainly to insure that consumer electronics and nearby high-power 
transmitters (commercial broadcast, etc.) won't interfere with the vehicle.

3) The main concern is not to route signal or power cables parallel to 
control cabling, since Honda tends to use low-power unshielded control 
cables between the ECU's.  In the MDX, I found that all the control 
cables are on the passenger side of the underbody, and all the 
non-electrical is on the drivers-side underbody, so I ran along the 
driver's side hydraulic lines.

4) Honda is generally considered RF friendly, as far as service 
technical (techline) is concerned.

I've not had any issues so far with the car or with the radio.  I can 
hear the ABS control signals weakly around 20m, but have not seen any 
interference with the braking system.

I decided to run all of the radios in the back-end of the MDX, and use a 
12V DC-DC regulator that has filtering, etc to the radios.  That was 
probably overkill, but it's nice to have clean and regulated 13.8VDC 
power to the gear regardless of whether the engine is running.

Joe