strength of sheetmetal around the top hatch opening.

I scooped a nice HF ham antenna as part of a package. It's fairly heavy due to the construction and ideally should be mounted high and centered on the vehicle.

The antenna is this: The tarheel II, it's about 16" tall and 2 lbs. or so. Here's a picture. I'm not into drilling visible holes in my roof or using magnetic mounts for the antenna. I plan to fashion a simple L shaped bracket about 6-8" wide and about 4" tall and the leg of the L will be about 1.5". I'll drill the 1" hole to pass the antenna base through and then lock it down.

post suspended till i can get some pics to explain things clearly. I'll get back to this.

As you know it’s pretty thin. Do you think that it can be braced with more sheet metal on the bottom of the roof panel?

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Originally Posted by Eggman

As you know it’s pretty thin. Do you think that it can be braced with more sheet metal on the bottom of the roof panel?

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Yes, the metal is surprisingly thin in non stressed areas.

I think a stiffener plate of 10x2.5" behind the 8x2" bracket I'm going to fashion should help considerably with distributing the load. To be 99% sure of safety for what I'm planning I need to find a program that allows me calculate wind loading given an object's dimensions and speed into the wind. I remember seeing something like that in my travels but TBH I can't recall if it was a Lotus macro, a standalone utility program or something one of my students wrote.

I'm familiar with that sort of antenna. It beats me how it could be properly mounted without putting a hole in the roof and adding a glued-on reinforcement plate directly underneath.