Thank you. Bare with me here, this might be long winded, and I will attempt to explain how the radio is set up.
The radio project was based on a couple of assumptions;
1) For safety I needed to be able to hear the traffic
2) As the bike is brand new I didn't want to cut, drill, or alter the body/wiring.
3) No cables or wires to come loose in the wind or interfere with driving.
After ruling out using the glove box, under the seat and the top box to mount a radio, for the reasons above, I took a trip to the local Radio Shack and came up with a small 2" portable radio designed I believe for joggers. The key is that it has a belt clip that will fit on the passengers seat strap. Handy and secure. Here's a link.
http://www.thesourcecc.com/estore/Product.aspx?language=en-CA&catalog=Online&category=Personal+Radios&product=1218247
I'm sure there are many other types out there and you may have something kicking around that will do. I picked this one based on the quality of Grundig...I already have a portable shortwave that has excellent sound and range.
It came with ear plugs and the connector wire acts like an antenna, but there were two problems. The ear plug didn't stay in my ear very well and out of the city the signal weakened if I moved around, so the unit would scan to the next station.
So I decided to install an antenna which looks pretty cool on the GT and also found an old set of headphones that one side wasn't working.
The headphone was small enough that it fit in the ear webbing of my 3/4 helmet chin strap, and when I did it up fit snuggly in place. Really good quality sound much better than the earplugs I tried. So I removed the one good ear muff from the head band and cut and stripped the wire from the other side back almost to the plug to accommodate the antenna cable. To the bare wired I soldered a female 1/8" stereo plug connector.
To go to the antenna I used a 1/8" stereo patch cable and cut one plug off to attach a battery type wire connector the size to fit over a 6mm (1/4") bolt. This bolt screws into the bottom of a standard one piece antenna whip.
The antenna was mounted on a piece of plexiglass 1/4" thick x 26" long x 1" wide, like and arm projecting out from under the top box. I choose this material because I wanted to heat it and bend it up at the underside end to mold to a slot under the rack giving it more stability and also to bend it parallel to the ground near the antenna end as the top box is on an angle and the the antenna was leaning forward.
To mount the arm I slotted it and used the same bolt as secures the top box (leaving out a washer that was on the inside to give it enough clearance.) I couldn't find a 6mm x 60mm bolt locally that would be long enough. Drilled a hole at the other end of the plexiglass arm to mount the antenna.
Everything was fine but the arm was flexing too much so I broke one of the rules and drilled and used two self tapping screws through the arm into the rack, between the top box bolt mounting bolt and the end of the box towards the antenna.
I've had it up to 120 kph on one of our warmer days and the antenna of course bent with the wind but was very secure.
All in all I'm very pleased with this set up. I hope you could follow this horrible explanation. As soon as the weather gets better I will take some close up pics of the radio connections and under the top box and post them.
