In May 2005, I decided to sell off my old VHF/UHF setup and do something I had been considering for a while-construct my own HF mobile setup.  For years, I had VHF/UHF FM radios in my car, and was getting bored with it.  I was using the VHF/UHF stuff to listen, mostly.  I did very little talking on it, because it really didn't interest me.  So, I removed the FM gear and sold it, and used the money to purchase the Yaesu 857D, an ATAS-120, and the separation kit for the rig.  The car is a 1996 Pontiac Sunfire.

Since I operate mostly CW, I figured I would give mobile CW a shot.  Having tried it before, I knew it wasn't as hard as some people make it out to be.  It actually is very easy-if you are proficient using a set of paddles, you will have no trouble at all doing mobile CW.  The main problem is finding the right paddles, and mounting them in such a way that they are easily accessible.

The paddles I use in my car are a set of Bulldog paddles, made by K9LU (see http://www.unifiedmicro.com/bulldog.html ).  I actually had these sitting around in the shack, as I had used them in my home station for a period of time.  I just needed a way to mount them in a place where I would be able to comfortably operate them.  I decided to mount them to the parking brake, which was right next to the driver's seat, and to the left of the stick shift.

I designed (slapped together) a mount for the paddles, made from a piece of sheet metal and a broom clip.  The broom clip came from Home Depot (it is supposed to be screwed to the wall, then used to put a broom or rake in) and the sheet metal came from my basement.  It needed a bit of sanding at the edges so I wouldn't kill myself if I brushed up against it, and needed two holes drilled to accommodate the broom clip.  Add a few screws, and I had the perfect mount for the paddles.

The Bulldog paddles have suction cups on them, and they also come with a nice amount of Fun-Tak to make the paddles stick to anything.  That was good enough to make it stick to the mount, and this is the final result, clipped to the parking brake:

When the parking brake is down, the key actually goes down into a perfect position for operating.  It is comfortable to operate, and even though the paddles are pretty cheap (I think I paid about $20 for them; that might have gone up, though), they feel pretty good.  It's easy to send good code with them at high speeds (both WPM and MPH), and they haven't broken into a million pieces yet, so I would recommend them pretty highly for mobile operating, or even for your station.

The only thing to keep in mind is that the cable comes pre-installed into the paddles, and is only about 3' long, with a 1/4 stereo plug.  If you need a longer cable or different plug, you will have to get an extension cable or plug adapter.  Of course, you could just cut the plug and install a new one or extend the cable, but it may be cleaner/neater/more reliable to use adapters and extension cables.  Not wanting to get involved in minor surgery, I bought a 15' extension cable from Rat Shack with a 1/4 inch jack and 1/4 inch plug and ran it through the car into the trunk where the rig is mounted.

As you can see in the header picture, the faceplate for the FT-857 is mounted above the rear-view mirror.  There is a small hump on the ceiling of the car, which is the housing for the sunroof controls.  This looked good to mount the face on.  I could have mounted it in the compartment in the console (see the paddle picture above), but I would be reaching over the stick every time I went to tune the radio.  Besides, it looks cool mounted on the ceiling of the car!

Mounting the faceplate on the hump wasn't difficult, but it required a certain amount of work, which took a few hours.
First, I ran the control cable to the front, from the trunk.  Fortunately, the YSK-857 gives you plenty of cable, so I didn't have to worry about running out and getting stuck.  The control cable runs behind a few plastic panels in the trunk, behind a plastic panel on the back driver's side wall, up into the ceiling.  I pulled the ceiling down a bit and worked the cable up to the front to where the faceplate would be mounted.

With the YSK-857, you get a mounting bracket for the faceplate.  This was installed on the ceiling hump by punching four holes in the hump with an awl, then putting the hardware in.  Getting my hands into the ceiling behind the hump to screw in the tiny nuts was a bit of a challenge, but it is doable.  Finally, I pulled the control cable out of the ceiling, plugged it into the faceplate, and slid it into the mounting bracket, and I was done.

The only other problem with the installation was the power cable.  Since the FT-857D was trunk-mounted, I was fairly certain that the supplied Yaesu power cable was too short to reach the battery from the trunk, and I was right.  I extended the cable by using about 6' of #10 house wiring from Home Depot.  I soldered it onto the Yaesu power cable and ran it to the battery by going through the hole that the car's control cables go through.  I then added an additional fuse holder to the extension.  It is a fuse holder used in custom stereo installations, and holds huge (40 amp) fuses.  This was added to the positive lead.

The microphone comes up next to the driver's seat, and is easy to access.  The speaker for the rig sits under the seat (it is an MFJ speaker).  Both the microphone extension cable and the speaker extension cable run under the seat, to the plastic covers by the doors, and then back to the radio by going under the back seat into the trunk.

The ATAS-120 antenna is a good antenna that seems to work well.  It mounts right onto the Diamond K-400 mount that was on my car from the old VHF antenna, and I have never had a problem with it.  The K-400 is sufficient to hold the weight of the antenna.  You will have to ground the antenna, though, in order to get it to work.  I ran several lengths of coax braid from the screws on the mount to various points on the inside of the trunk.  I unscrewed several screws from the trunk and ran the braid to them, then screwed them back in.  This has worked fine.  However, the antenna still will not autotune correctly.  If you use the TUNE button on the FT-857D, it will tune the antenna maybe 75% of the way, and then I have to manually tune it with the UP/DOWN buttons.  I think more grounding would be required to make it autotune correctly, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.  Manually tuning the antenna to resonance works fine, though.

Since the FT-857D also has VHF/UHF capabilites, I added a dualband 2m/440 mag mount.  I don't leave it on the car all the time, though, as I don't use these bands much, and don't need my car to look stranger than it already does.
Since the ATAS-120 works on 6 meters, I don't need another antenna for that band.  I know the ATAS is also specified to work on 2m/440, but the performance is very poor.  If you were wondering whether or not to buy the diplexer that takes the two antenna outputs on the '857 and runs them into one antenna, don't.  You can get a cheap dualband magmount and get better 2m/440 performance than the ATAS will give you, and save a good amount of money in the process.  Use the ATAS on HF and 6 meters and a separate antenna for 2m/440 and you'll be doing just fine.

It seems a lot of people have RFI issues with their HF mobile setups.  People have told me things like "When I transmit on 40 meters in the car, the wipers go on" or "When I use more than 30 watts on 20 meters, the radio shuts itself off" or "If I run CW, the gauges in the car start going crazy".  Fortunately, for some reason, I have virtually no issues with RFI.  The only thing I have ever noticed is that the defroster indicator light will sometimes flicker on and off with my CW signal.  That's it.  I also have no car noise getting into the receiver; no ignition noise or fuel pump noise, or anything like that.  The noise floor is the same if I have the car running or not.  I think this is more a function of luck than good engineering practice, though.  I've heard some mobile setups which have 59+ static and noise when the car is running.  Since I have a low noise floor, I can tell when there is high noise present in an area I am driving though.  I can also tell if a car close to me is very "dirty"; if someone drives next to me and the noise level rises up to 599, but disappears when they drive away, it's easy to tell which cars are making good antennas.

As far as on the air performance is concerned, the setup performs excellent.  It actually outperforms my home station on some of the higher bands.  For example, the first night I had the setup running, I managed to work 4 continents on 20m SSB, and a number of countries, mostly on Europe.  Here are some excerpts from my mobile log to give an idea:
 

This is just a sampling; I've worked several hundred QSO's ranging from all over North America, Europe, South America (the "easy" stuff from the East Coast) and a number into Asia, Africa, and Oceania.  I have not run more than 100 watts from the car, since I don't have an amp, and the ATAS is only rated for 100 W anyway.

Mobiling has been a lot of fun, and I hope my next car is as "good" as this one, with regards to RFI and noise.  (Trust me, the car is "bad" in many, many other ways).  I've also had a lot of fun working the County Hunters Net and giving out some counties.  I've also done some QSO parties where I ran from county to county and gave out multipliers for the contest, and that has been fun too.  I hope to do more QSO partying this year.  The Mid Atlantic QSO party is easy, since I live within the territory, and I am thinking about driving down for the PA QSO party, since PA is relatively close to my home.  I'd like to thank K2HVN, my Elmer into this hobby, for introducing me to mobiling.  He showed me mobile CW before I even had my license, and introduced me to county hunting and the CHN during that time.

If you're thinking about trying an HF mobile setup, my advice would be to do it.  It is lots of fun and will make your driving less monotonous, especially if you have a long commute, take road trips, or get stuck in traffic a lot.  Plus, you have the opportunity to be on the air at times you wouldn't normally be on.  I have caught many openings to Asia and the Pacific (and many new countries and IOTA's) that I would have missed if I didn't have my mobile HF.  These openings would normally occur in the morning and early evening, when I was commuting to/from work.  Until I got the HF mobile, I missed them almost every day because I was sitting in traffic, and not in front of a radio.  So, to any DXers out there, a mobile HF setup will give you more "on" time.  So, if you commute 30 minutes to work each way, and have an hour lunch break, that means 2 extra hours of DXing per day.  It adds up!