astrodanco

I recently purchased a Kenwood PNAV-512. The PNAV-512 is a combination of a KVT-512 head unit and a KNA-G510 hideaway navigation unit.

KNA-G510, Garmin GVN-53, their variations and their predecessors all use a GPS antenna that is connected via RG-174 coaxial cable and a rather difficult to find GT5 1S-HU connector.

I already had a very good Antenex brand NMO mount GPS antenna on my car’s roof and preferred to use that antenna rather than the antenna supplied by Kenwood. An NMO mounted antenna makes for a much cleaner installation.

The business end of my antenna’s coax cable has a BNC connector on it. I prefer BNC connectors because they're good up to 11 MHZ and because they’re very easy to work with. I like the solder clamp style BNC connectors because they make solid connections and they're easy to attach to coax with minimum skill.

Thus my task was to create a GT5 1S-HU connector to BNC connector adapter cable. Unfortunately I was only able to find GT5 1S-HU connectors in minimum order 1000 quantities. I could not afford to buy 1000 of them!

I did the following instead:

1. I purchased a replacement antenna from Amazon (search for "GVN-52 antenna"). Amazon has these for $21.99 each with free shipping (Amazon.com: Garmin Antenna for GVN-52 Navigation System (010-10826-00): Electronics).

2. I cut the GPS antenna off leaving just the GT5 1S-HU connector and a few feet of coax.

3. I then attached an S.M. Electronics SC-6013 (a nice little finger grip style solder clamp type BNC jack connector for RG-174 coax) to the cut off end of the cable. S.M. Electronics has these for $18.00 each (S.M. ELECTRONICS BNC CABLE CONNECTORS). That web page shows they're for RG-316, but when you refer to the specifications PDF (http://www.smelectronics.us/SC6013.pdf), you'll see that they also work with RG-174. No minimum order required.

dav

Thanks, astrodanco. More trouble than I need to go to, but good to know how it's done... if and when I need it, too!

Welcome to the site.

astrodanco

The whole exercise only took a few minutes -- once the parts arrived.

BTW, the Kenwood DNX-5120, DNX-7120 and DNX-8120 (which all use Garmin for GPS) probably have the same oddball GT5 1S-HU antenna connector?

I wish I knew why they didn't just use a more standard FAKRA-SMB connector. Then I could have just purchased a ready made adapter (like one of these: Custom 50 Ohm Adapters: SMB, SMA, N, BNC, & TNC - 174-) rather than having to make my own!