[aprssig] New Truck/Setup Ford Expedition GPS and Install Questions

[Rich Garcia]

I am going to purchase a Ford Expedition in the next day or two. We are
passing on the on-board navigation for obvious reasons :-) For the price of
an on-board system I can purchase D-710, probably any GPS I want, new mounts
antennas and
all wiring/mount materials.

Any suggestions as to which GPS units I should be looking at? I have been
tempted to look at the AV/MAP G5 but am wondering if there is anything
better out there. Since this will be our primary GPS as large as we can get
is what we are looking for. I am getting away with this expense since the
XYL is tired of having a laptop on her lap hours on end during long trips. I
was thinking of a jotto desk for the laptop but it appears that the center
console will not allow a desk of any kind and still have passenger room. We
are going to go for the DVD system for the kids I think, don't know if it
has inputs so we could hook up the laptop, if it does maybe a mini-12v PC
would be in order?

Also any other sig members with the Expedition? I would appreciate it if you
can contact me off list with any words of advice on placement and wiring. I
plan on doing 1 dual band antenna, a 800/1.9Ghz antenna for EVDO, and
possibly a GPS antenna. Radio and EVDO Cradlepoint router to be mounted
somewhere in the rear quarter panels. The cradlepoint is a router for EVDO
AirCards that provides a WiFi hot spot and LAN port, I'll mount the router
back there and run an antenna wire also. When we go on a long trip I'll just
plug my USB card in there and flood the car with a broadband WiFi
connection. Minimal wires is what we are aiming for, even for the electronic
geek that I am trips with my toys can be annoying with the rats nest we have
by the time we add a phone charger and radar detector to the front
windshield!

Rich
k4gps at arrl.net