Help needed - DAB aerial in a fibreglass car

Help needed - DAB aerial in a fibreglass car

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Cooper1999

Original Poster:

322 posts

198 months

Sunday 13th January 2019
quotequote all
Hoping someone on here can help (as I'm not great with electrics!).

I'm in the later stages of building a GRP kit car (a Mini Marcos). I'd like to fit a DAB head unit ultimately and recently purchased an Autoleads DAB-AA1 aerial unit.

Having read the instructions I'll need to attach the aerial to a rear, side window because both the front and rear screens have heating elements. But one line in the instructions is confusing me. After instructing to remove the sticky pad bases and stick to the window, it states 'Stick the earth plane strip to the metal surface'.
Now, the antenna piece (that sticks to the window) has a short 'L' shaped piece with a sticky backing (it also has a longer, thinner 'L' shaped bit that looks to project further into the window area). Is this short L item meant to stick on to i.e. the metal part of an A pillar? In which case - if this piece does need to be attached to metal (for earthing presumably) am I stuffed?

Sorry if this is a dumb question - never fitted a DAB radio/head unit before.

Thanks in advance.

broncoupe

152 posts

225 months

Sunday 13th January 2019
quotequote all
Hi its not a huge problem
What you need is some earth strap.
metal flexible strip which is about1" wide you can probably find on ebay or specialist kit car supplier.
Connect 1 end to a good metal fixing around maybe door hinge area, the other end put under your trim
round windscreen near cable from antenna that requires earthing
Not familiar with your car so you may have metal strengthen hoop around screen embedded in fibreglass if so you can connect to this both cables
to give an even better earth plane effect
broncoupe

Cooper1999

Original Poster:

322 posts

198 months

Monday 14th January 2019
quotequote all
Thanks broncoupe.
There is an battery cable earth return quite close - would that work?
Cheers,

broncoupe

152 posts

225 months

Monday 14th January 2019
quotequote all
Yes
On a metal car the metal work helps the Ariel do its job, on fiberglass by using the earth braid /strap you create a more low rent version
But should still work
Regards