Has anyone used the Sirius Sportster on their bike? I've had this model (it's older, 5+years) in my cars and garage where it always sat in a cradle. I'm just looking to use it on a 10 day trip I'm planning, so just want to temporarily "mount" it. Does it have to be in a cradle??

Thanks guys,
sv

 

Even though I also have a Stiletto, I use the old Sportster all the time on my Ultra. I don't see any way you can hook it up unless you have a dock (cradle); how else would you connect power, antenna, line out, and so on? Before I had the Ultra, where I just plug the line out connection to the aux port on the radio, I just used a RAM mount to install the cradle to the bar (on my Road King) and used the FM transmitter to send the signal to a Walkman FM stereo radio in my pocket, with JVC earplug-type speakers in my ears. That's about 70% as good as J&M helmet speakers used with the Ultra Harmon-Kardon stereo.

When I didn't even have the RAM mount on the Road King, I just "borrowed" one of my other cradles (house or car, don't remember) and hooked up the 12 VDC power to the bike's Battery Tender connection. I have a Tour-Pak on a detachable rack for the RK and I put the Sportster and its wiring in there. It transmitted just fine to the Walkman in my pocket. Shame that Harleys don't generally have tank bags, because that's a great place to put a radio with a bunch of wiring if you can't mount the radio to the bar.

So to answer your question, I don't think you could use a Sportster without a cradle, owing to the nature of the connector on the bottom of the unit.

That old Sportster is probably the best Sirius radio they ever built. It is bulky, but tough. My Stiletto is a total piece of s**t. Also, newer units than the old Sportster have the FM transmitter power cut way down by the FCC. My old unit is great for transmitting a good FM signal all over the garage and part of my yard (if I'm doing something noisy I wear an earmuff FM radio).

Good luck with using the Sportster.

 

thanks, i kind of figured as much but was hoping that somebody had an idea....i want to use the sportster because the dang thing is receiving a signal that they're not billing me for and i don't want to buy another unit and raise any red flags to switch the "service" over.

 

Nope, you need the cradle. I have been using my Sportster on my 2000 FL and now my 09 FL. Works great. Mine is on a Ram mount from Bass Pro Shop. That's it on the left. The back of the cradle attaches directly to the mount. It's a pretty slick system.