This may be an obvious question but I searched the HoW and found nothing on it:

My son -- a thoughtful young man -- gave me a BMW dust cover for Christmas. I finally pulled it out of the packaging last night and put it on the bike. There is no factory hold or grommet for the antenna, so for the time being the bike's left hindquarters are uncovered.

Am I supposed to make my own hole in the fabric, or am I supposed to remove the antenna every time I put the cover on?

If the former, what suggestions do you have for making a hole and reinforcing it so it doesn't tear?

TIA.

There should be a grommet that came with the cover, but if not you can get one at most hardware stores. You can do it a couple of different ways, but one is to take the antenna off and put the bullet shaped boot back on, put the cover on and mark where the antenna needs to come through and proceed with your gromment installation.

I also have the BMW dust cover and like it very much. They are great looking and do the job of protecting from dust quite well.

However, they did not address the antenna when at the drawing board. I simply installed a brass grommet which I purchased from the local home supply store (Lowes). Grommets and installation tool are cheap enough.

It has worked well since.

http://www.bmwlt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=524
Take a look at this post. It concerns my Trike cover modifications, but is equally relevant to your dust cover.

Thanks for the tips, guys. It makes sense now. I can buy a grommet and have my wife (expert seamstress-type) whip-stitich it into place.

Appreciate the help.

I had a seamstress put a button hole on my cover. Works great and there is nothing rubbing on the antena. You said you wife sews well, just mark it and ask her. Shoud take about ten minutes.

My wife mentioned doing a button hole, but also suggested that doing a button hole around/over a grommet would make it even tougher for the fabric to tear. In other words, she's going to incorporate a grommet into a button hole... if that makes sense. Think of those adhesive paper hole-punch reinforcement thingies... same idea.

I did the same. I went down to my sporting goods store and bought a supply of plastic grommets for tarps. I marked where the antenna would be and installed the grommet. Its plastic so it will harm any body parts. One solution.