[Azimov]

The SUV is from a box of fire and police vehicles sold by Wal-Mart at Christmas time. The whole plastic set was 10.00, but I picked it up for 3.00 after Xmas. It had several police vehicles, including the SUV and a couple of caprice cars that I still plan to use. The ambulance body came in this set as well, but it was a blue and white police paddy wagon. The fire engines are too small to use for zips as are the fire chief type vehicles. All of the police vehicles work great though.
The antenna mod is pretty simple. The spring is used in place of the existing wire on the cars. If stretched out completely, they would be around 2 ft long. The antenna used on the controller is from the free rabbit ears you get with new TVs these days. Just two antennae hooked to a triangular piece of plastic with wires hanging off. I seperated the unit into the two seperate antenas and swapped them for the stock antenna in the controller. The TV antennas are about 3 ft long. The range is unreal with this setup.
The flashing circuit is called a Bicore often used in BEAM robotics circuits. You can find a schematic if you use a search engine and type in BEAM or Bicore. I just hooked LEDs to it instead of motors. The flash rate and on time of the LEDs can be adjusted to suit using this circuit.