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[Jimbob]

Heres a thought...

TomTom's get traffic updates from an 'add on' aerial
Omega's have traffic master, where is the aerial for this? is it built into TM box, or does it use roof aerial?

IF it uses an existing aerial on the car, could this lead be butchered to fit the tomtom and provide the graphical traffic updates?

[Marks DTM Calib]

Its a stick on think behind the dash, nothing special.

I suspect it cant be used as may well be a different frequency and hence wavelength and aerial size will need to be different.

[Jimbob]

Ahh well, could have been nice

[ghondie]

hi tom tom taffic updates come in on fm frequencies iirc using tmc most common one is on classic fm. so a frequency of 100.9 round here. the traffic master updates come in via a pager signal, on 137 ish
technically you could use the tm aerial, as the length of the aerial will only be slightly shorter than is needed, but as its set up as a dipole you would have quite a big loss in reception.

to cut a long story short. yes you can however dont expect it to work as good as with the tomtom one  

[Jimbob]

Cheers

[philayl]

Hi, in the same vein, can you use the roof mounted telephone aerial for the TomTom traffic? I no longer use this aerial as i have installed a bluetooth radio.

[VXL V6]

Telephone Aerial will be for GSM frequencies, ie. 900Mhz, not sure if the VX one supports PCN frequencies but they are in the 1800Mhz bandwidth.

Best option would be to take the aerial off and fit one in the existing hole that matches the frequency requirements, lot of work though!

[ghondie]

hi dunno should not be too much work as long as you can get the head lining out easy enough, never done it myself but was thinking about it, to put my marine band aerial on this car, as the hole is there may as well use it.

im sure you could probably get an aftermarket "beesting" type aerial, and that should just about do the job.  

of course you could always get some wire and make one that runs inside the head lining of the car, is as easy as getting some coax cable RG58 or RG8 would work, but are pretty thick, only problem is that this is 50Ohm cable, and most radio equipment need 75Ohm, as your going to be making a dipole this should'nt realy matter.

have a look around the net at ham radio sites for dipole construction.

i may even make a howto for you

cheers

[zirk]

Hi Guys,

Just thought this may help, the visual display Traffic Masters (the ones with the UK Map display) work of the old AirCall National Paging Network 153 MHz (now owned by Vodapage who have 2 channels 137 and 153 MHz).

The Voice Over Traffic Masters (Vauxhall fitted) work off the typical motorway junctions transmitters and from memory RX is around 445 MHz UHF, so no good for 100 MHz VHF for Tom Tom.

You could use your existing Mobile phone antenna (900 /1800 MHz) but the whip length would need to be about 68 cm long (1/4 wave), or you could use a typical Vauxhall whip type antenna which is basically a 68 cm wire wrapped around a strip of fibreglass (assuming you can modify the thread to fit).

The Mobile phone coax would be communications 50 Ohms type, rather than the commercial broadcast standard of 75 Ohms coax (in fact Car Radio coax is 300 Ohms balanced line so the aerial whip only is used for VHF FM and the Whip and coax line together is used for MW, LW bands) but at short lengths for RX reception this wouldn’t make a lot of difference for your 100 MHz Tom Tom.

Chris.