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80 Channel UHF 2-way radio

80 Channel UHF 2-way radio

Mar 24 2015

To keep in touch with other road users I've fitted an 80 channel 2-way radio. It's a GME TX4500 5 Watt model, and it's made in Australia!

If you are an Australian MAN owner, and you've had the factory option UHF wiring and antenna pre-fitted, beware! It is NOT suitable for the Australian 477Mhz frequencies, and if you fit an Australian UHF radio using the factory antenna it will damage the radio. The OEM antenna is for European frequencies. 

Also, the RF fitting and the power cable are not Australian style connectors either. These are the internal UHF fittings as it comes from the factory:

These need to be removed, and replaced with the Australian equivalents. I just chopped off the Euro fittings and soldered on the local ones.

The external antenna needs replacing. The antenna has an M5 thread, which I found very difficult to source. After a call to MAN Head office I got the details of a QLD company who replace these items for MAN Australia, and they were excellent. Supplied me with a new antenna and shipped it the same day. They are called On Highway Electronics, and this is their website: On Highway Electronics Home Page. Cost was $110 which I thought was a lot for an antenna!

The radio got installed above the driver's head, in one of the factory DIN slots. Seeing as there was a spare set of power leads and there was a spare DIN slot , I installed an extra USB socket to power my Crash Camera. This frees up the 24v cigarette lighter socket on the dash for my GPS.

Note that the 'black box' under the CB is a monitoring device that tracks how fast the truck has been going, and how long it has been driven, like an electronic log book. In Europe, the police can scan this unit to check on the driver, but it's not used in Australia.

The USB power lead runs down under the windscreen trim, to power the Papago Navig8r Crash Cam. It records in a loop about 4 hours of driving history, and keeps GPS position and speed records. It also acts as a digital speedo which is more accurate than the main truck speedo.

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