Quad Ham Radio Upgrade

A while back we installed a QYT-8900 dual band ham radio on Jessica’s quad so we could reach her or she could reach us in the many areas around here that don’t have cell service. After using it for a few months we found that more transmit power was needed to get out of the deep river valleys and she couldn’t hear it while she was riding with her helmet on so some sort of upgrade was needed. Most people view ham radio as a hobby, but it is the only form of communication for many of us in sparsely populated remote areas so it becomes more of a necessity than a hobby. Here are the after and before pictures, the new radio is on the left and the old on the right. The old radio worked great in most places outside of river valleys and canyons so here is a look at what we did for those of you who might be thinking about doing this for either extending your hobby or ensuring that you have reliable communications when needed.

Luckily, we used heavier wiring during the initial install just in case we needed to change things later so some of the work as already done for an upgrade. The next obvious question is what ham radio to use as it is a quad with a small battery and charging system so whatever radio we chose had to have low power consumption. Our choice ended up being a Motorola CDM1250 VHF mobile that can be programmed to the two-meter ham bands. It is a commercial radio so it is well sealed against moisture and has excellent transmit and receive audio quality. The standby power consumption is under one-amp so it wouldn’t put a strain on the charging system. The transmit power consumption on 54-watt high power is 15 amps so it will drain the quad battery fast if you are not careful, but the 20-watt low power setting is battery friendly. The best thing about it is that the CDM1250 puts out 13 watts of audio by installing an axillary external speaker so it is loud enough to hear over just about any engine or road noise. Best of all these radios are cheap on eBay because they require special software and an old computer so they are not very user friendly to program.

We began the install by first deciding where to mount the external speaker so it would be out of the way and reasonably protected from limbs. It also has to be waterproof as it will be mounted unprotected from the rain and harsh weather. We found a spot on the front fender that worked just perfect as it had a spot that was flat enough to mount the speaker to if we didn’t use the factory mounting bracket. I decided the easiest way to mount it was to take the speaker housing apart and add two “Rivet nuts”, which are basically rivets that have threads inside them to act like regular nuts that won’t spin so you don’t need to access the backside to hold anything in place while mounting it. I drilled two holes at the top of the speaker and installed two rivet nuts with the specialty tool that was made to install them. You don’t need tools like this too often, but they are worth their weight in gold when you need them and there are no other easy options. I checked the speaker clearance and wrote a quick message to Jessica on the inside of the housing before putting it back together. I like to leave hidden messages in hard to reach or access areas for people to find in the future just to make someone’s day if they ever see it after a lot of hard work to get there. I added a two-pole connector onto the speaker wires so that it could be completely removed without cutting later if needed. I drilled holes through the fender and used anti-seize on the bolts when I mounted the speaker.

Running the speaker wires from the front of the quad to the back storage box where the radio would be located was a major challenge as there is not much easy room to run wires through a newer quad. The front rack and the plastic panels had to be unscrewed and removed to gain access to the frame to run the wires after shielding them in a protective tube. This was by far the most difficult radio install I have ever done in my life because of the lack of working room and areas to hide the wires to keep the install looking professional. I just kept reminding myself the whole time that it would all be worth it in the end.

We had installed the previous radio inside the storage box on the rear quad rack, but the Motorola was larger than the QYT was so it was not going to be a quick switching out of radios as the CDM1250 was way wider so you could not use a bracket to mount it. The top half of the box was disassembled so we could access the install area easily and the old radio was removed. The CDM1250 width was just right across the center of it to allow holes to be drilled in the box to allow the radio to be directly using only a couple of shims for a spacer. I used security screws for mounting just to be safe. I had previously used a two-pole connector so I simply made a jumper to connect the “Ignition on” function so the radio would automatically come on as soon as it got power. I had to drill a hole in the box to run the speaker wire through and it was connected to the Motorola accessory plug that slides into a connection on the rear of the radio.

We tested the radio as soon as all the wires and Larsen NMO antenna were connected to make sure it worked before putting everything back together. We were able to reach two-meter repeaters 60 miles away on a quad mounted radio so it worked excellent. You can never have a perfect ground plane for an antenna on a quad or UTV so forget about achieving that and just make the antenna match as perfect as you possibly can by testing it with a meter. ATVs and UTVs definitely were not made to mount radios on so just do the beast you can with what little space you have to work with. We anti-seized the bolts and put everything back together after successfully testing it so her new radio is up and running. The external speaker is too loud when it is turned up all the way so it works way better than expected. Projects like this are hard and way out of the ordinary, but the results are well worth it. We had a need for reliable communications without cell service and we could not find any “How to” information out there when we searched for it so we decided to fix that problem.