What are these things on my roof?

[Salty Walty]

I have to imagine this has been asked before, but my search didn’t turn up anything. There are a few small (and I’m pretty sure this is the technical word) doo-dads on the roof above the front of the bus. I imagine they’re for the radio, but I’m not sure if anyone has repurposed them. I’ll attach some pictures of the “thingies” as well as the terminal ends of the cords inside the bus. Thanks, friends.

[HamSkoolie]

A wider view might help but they look like low powered antennae and the cable looks to be either SMA or the things they use on cable TV and otther 75 ohm cables.

Most likely some sort of tracking and information system in which low powered signals send and or receive location and other information.

[cadillackid]

almost looks like one of them is a GPS receiver and the SMA cable to go with..

[mmoore6856]

you can remove them if you want

[Albatross]

They look like some kind of HF radio transceiver or something along those lines.

Probably some kind of proprietary 'safety'/tracking system some ISD had installed. Highly probable that one is directly or indirectly GPS-based, with a data component modulated into the signal.

You *might* be able to repurpose one of them into a GPS device if your electronically savvy, otherwise, I would gut and cut.

[HamSkoolie]

Originally Posted by Albatross

They look like some kind of HF radio transceiver or something along those lines.

Probably some kind of proprietary 'safety'/tracking system some ISD had installed. Highly probable that one is directly or indirectly GPS-based, with a data component modulated into the signal.

You *might* be able to repurpose one of them into a GPS device if your electronically savvy, otherwise, I would gut and cut.

Not HF antennae. HF (for high frequency) was named way way back when HF (3-30 MHz) was at the upper reaches of technology. Then came VHF or "Very High Frequency" (30-300 MHz) and technology continued to advance giving us UHF or "Ultra High Frequency" for 300+ MHz and we're now in the gigahertz and even higher.
So while a wi-fi antenna might be able to be that small, an actual HF antenna would be WAY longer....a 20 meter HF antenna (21 MHz) is electronically roughly 33 feet long.

[Albatross]

Pardon my youth, I'm only a Technician...

I know you're correct, but I generally refer to things in the GHz range as HF, since it's the upper band of the spectrum these days. Actual, legitimate "HF" radio is rather low in frequency compared to the kinds of things I'm used to dealing with (wifi, cellular (3G+), GPS, and so on).

[HamSkoolie]

Originally Posted by Albatross

Pardon my youth, I'm only a Technician...

I know you're correct, but I generally refer to things in the GHz range as HF, since it's the upper band of the spectrum these days. Actual, legitimate "HF" radio is rather low in frequency compared to the kinds of things I'm used to dealing with (wifi, cellular (3G+), GPS, and so on).

Hey, it took me a while to stop complaining about how HF wasn't high at all.
Frequency and bandwidth going in opposite directions is a physics thing and all we could change would be the words. But with HF/VHF/UHF etc changing the words would upset a bunch of old timers and all the books would have to change. And that's when we meet HUMAN NATURE.
It is a proven FACT that the vast majority of humans will not change until the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of changing.
And so we find ourselves with things like legacy software clear up to the enterprise level, people running 3 and 4 generation old OS's, paper manuals, and all manner of things.
Sure there are the early adopters who jump at the next step like a puppy after a treat.....mmmm more like a cat swiping razor sharp claws at your had to make you drop the treat in some cases (the latest IPhone for instance)..... but the vast majority, they resist.

[Albatross]

Originally Posted by HamSkoolie

Hey, it took me a while to stop complaining about how HF wasn't high at all.
Frequency and bandwidth going in opposite directions is a physics thing and all we could change would be the words. But with HF/VHF/UHF etc changing the words would upset a bunch of old timers and all the books would have to change. And that's when we meet HUMAN NATURE.
It is a proven FACT that the vast majority of humans will not change until the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of changing.
And so we find ourselves with things like legacy software clear up to the enterprise level, people running 3 and 4 generation old OS's, paper manuals, and all manner of things.
Sure there are the early adopters who jump at the next step like a puppy after a treat.....mmmm more like a cat swiping razor sharp claws at your had to make you drop the treat in some cases (the latest IPhone for instance)..... but the vast majority, they resist.

Oh, I run some old OS's. Had a NAS that was running Slackware 8.1 when I was using Slack 13.37 on my desktop (because the old P4 couldn't handle the symmetric multi-processing kernels in the later editions). And I keep my old phones because they work, and I don't trust the newer versions to mind their own damn business and stay the hell out of mine. Also trying to avoid 5G wireless until I've had time to personally read-up and verify it's actually doing what they're trying to push that it's doing, and not just another late-great spyware platform, which is about what I've come to expect from anything I didn't build myself.

[TheHubbardBus]

Yeah, they're both antennas. If each only has a single coax connection to it, the white puck is likely GPS, with the taller likely dedicated to communications in uhf and/or microwave frequencies. Some antennas with similar profiles pack multiple frequency ranges / uses into the same body - which is easy to tell because they'll have more than one lead going to them.