Today after work I stopped at a small communications company to buy some RF connectors so that I could connect the antenna I mounted on the roof of car. Because I was driving around for work, and wasn't going have time near my soldering iron anytime soon, I asked what they would charge to install it for me. They ended up only charging me about $10 for the connector, installing it, and for one additional adaptor that I needed. Awesome! The guys that did this for me were the folks at Lentini Communications. I was told about their shop by a fellow ham, while talking on the New Haven, CT machine. With the antenna now connected to the radio, I decided to grab the audio adapters I needed to finish connecting the radio's audio to the car's audio.
With that thought in mind, I made a quick trip to Radio Shack. The audio extension cable that comes with the Yeasu head seperation kit plugs into the radio, and leaves you with a 1/8" female mono jack at the other end. I needed to get from this, to the 1/8" stero female jack that every ford I have driven in the last 6 years had. I ended up picking up a connector pack that had a 1/8" mono plug on one side, and a 1/8" stero jack on the other side. I then grabbed a short 1/8" male stero to male stero cable. Perfect!.....Until I went to the car. I flipped up the center console lid (because that's where Ford puts the Aux Jack) and - what the heck! No Aux jack! I looked all over and couldn't find it. I grabbed the manual for the car. The section about the radio tells you how to select the aux input using the radio, but doesn't tell you where the aux input jack is. What the heck.
I ended up checking with Google, and apparently I'm not the first person who has had this problem with their 2016 Ford Fusion. Apparently on many models and packages, there is no aux jack - just the USB jack for connecting an iPod, iPhone, or something similar. I turned around and took the connectors back in to Radio Shack and returned them. After some parking lot considerations, I came up with plan B.
I drove across town to Best Buy and bought one of these:
It is a basic bluetooth transmitter. The idea is to use this to take the audio from the radio, and transmit it to the SYNC bluetooth system in the car. After buying this, I realised however, that this has a stero plug on it, and I still needed an adapter to get to the 1/8" mono jack so........
Back to Radio Shack again for this. I actaully only needed the connector in the upper right, but they don't sell them individually (in the store anyway.) I'm sure I'll find a use for the other ones...even if it is just to fill up space in the junk drawer.
Even though it was plan B, the good news is that I now at least have the radio installed, with a working antenna, and working audio. I made a quick contact on a local repeater, and was told I sounded good - only note was that my audio was a little loud, so I backed off the mic gain. The next major peices of the project will be getting the antenna stuff installed for HF. As always....stay tuned!
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