Roof Penetrations and Cable Routing

[Fratto]

I am in the planning stage of adding an external cellular antenna. I am curious how everyone has dealt with roof penetrations for the cables and how you have routed cables from the penetration to the electronics equipment location.

In general, I do not like roof penetrations and have had poor luck in removing and re-installing interior components. On the interior components, it seems like once they are removed, they rarely go back as nicely as original.

Any ideas and thoughts would be great. Thanks and have a great Memorial Day weekend.

[Gil_J]

Consider the space above the refrigerator. It's a good place for the indoor equipment in the mid coach position. It also allows for antenna mounting away from the edge of the coach. Roof airs and TV antenna may impact this location.

The front cap is easy. It doesn't give you the ground plane advantage of being on the metal roof.

[freds]

Generally there's a vent for the refrigerator, in the case of my bus it's also the feed from the range hood. I mounted my cellular antenna on top of the refrigerator vent.

[Fratto]

Good suggestions. How are you doing roof penetrations? My existing penetrations appear to be holes with sealant. What about hoods with horizontal penetrations or other options? Or marine type with compression fittings

[Gil_J]

What the marine world uses will generally be better. That means a clamshell cover with caulk. The advantage is that it's not specific to the cable going through the penetration. The compression style cable seals are great. I've never seen one on a coach. Their limitations are they are specific to the cable diameter and the cable will be pointing straight up.

[tnjet]

Go look at the design of the antenna. (See image below). The unit I have purchased for my past two coaches is about 7 inches in diameter with wires coming straight down from the center of the unit. It has super sticky tape all around (360 degrees around) the wires on the flat surface of the antenna. I clean the roof section of the coach very good with 3M Adhesive remover to get a nice surface for the sticky tape, then feed the wires down through the hole and press like hell to get the tape seated. The antenna has a large nut and washer to give added clamping pressure to the coach rooftop. Tighten that fully. I then take RV roof sealant (buy it at Camper's World) and run a bead around the outside edge for added security. Never had that system leak.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71VswbexFXL._AC_UY218_.jpg