Cb install problems

There's a hell of a lot of good information in here.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/cb-specifics.434871/

More than likely it's because your antenna is so short and right behind the cab. I had a 5' and then a 4' near the tailgate and both had excellent SWR readings.

 

This

 

You can make ground straps out of coax. Strip back the coating and slide the braided ground out off the coax. Then flatten the braided strands and solder on ends. another thing to try would be to ground the anetenna to the truck bed the ground the truck bed to the to the frame on all four corners. CB's and antennas can have a pain to get right, but once you get it set you'll be glad you took the time to do it right.

 

No!

 

I have interference when I "roll" my windows down lol. Don't happen really often.

As for the radio, old like this it might have a lot of hours under power, and might have been used with poor swr, wich can cause damage to the cb (I read it, didn't experienced it). But this is mainly why I bought a new radio to replace the one I borrow from a friend.

 

You shorten your antenna because you find the 5' too long?

 

Care to expand on that?

 

No, I just found that the 5' was a little too ridiculous for my needs. The 4' suited my trails much better.

Here's the 4'



And here's the 5'

 

Sub'd

 

Both looks great imo. I have a 4' now but changing it for a 5'. Was close to buy a 102" stainless but no need I don't want to be a wannabe hahaha 5' will suit my needs. i also have a mid raise cap so won't look as high I think

Thanks for the pics it helps to visualise

 

Uniden 520 xl pro. Used it back then for like 3 or 4 years then got new truck and cb been in a box till now.

 

Braided ground straps work best. I always ran short straps 4-6 inches from bolt to bolt skip one and bolt to bolt inside door to frame on big rig with good results. 18 ft coax standard I wouldn't add any length and reliable SWR meter

 

Is there a performance benefit to using a standard antenna (requiring a ground)?

 

In short, yes.

What follows is my understanding of the matter, I am not any kind of expert and this is just a synthesis of things I have read and heard. I have talked to some HAM operators, who do have technical understanding. The standard antenna has best performance under suitable conditions. For the most part, our truck beds are not suitable. The issue is with Ground Plane, which is not the same as ground wire. Think of the antenna as two parts, the first part is the whip that stands vertically, the second part (and here is where it gets into the technical area that most of us are not aware of) is the ground plane. Let's say you have your antenna mounted on the roof of your truck, the roof is metal, fairly flat, and large enough that it provides a surface in all direction around the whip. As the radio wave is emitted from the whip, it is reinforced by the ground plane providing a much stronger signal. Ideally the ground plane is the same proportion to the wavelength as the whip. So, for a two metre wavelength it is common to see a 50 centimetre antenna used (1/4 wavelength), this is a good compromise between performance and practicality, 2m of whip is a bit much for a mobile unit. To get the best performance from the 50 cm whip you would have it positioned on your roof so you have 50 of roof all around, providing 360 degrees of ground plane. This will give you good signal propagation in all directions. This antenna needs to be grounded as well.

Now, for CB, there are a few problems. First, they are limited to four watts of output, which is not much. Second, the wavelength is in the 11 metre range, so even a 1/4 wavelength antenna will be close to nine or 10 feet long... which will want the same in ground plane, not to be found on a Tacoma! Finally, bed mount in a Tacoma with the composite bed has extremely poor ground plan characteristics.

Firestik offers an antenna that has been designed to work better without a ground plane for use by folks like us who are just not going to get good mounting conditions. I cannot say how they cracked the nut on this one. I have this antenna and get SWR in the 1.3 to 1.8 range, mounted near the back of my bedrail. This antenna comes with a unique cable and should not be grounded.

In the end, I find myself asking how much difference does it make? Most or all the people I know who run CBs use them for guiding on trials when you are generally in sight of each other and usually almost in shouting distance. Other than Obsessive Compulsion (which, for the record, I endorse!) there is not much need for an effective setup in my case. As I am interested in using two way radio for longer distances, I can see I need to get licensed for Amateur Radio anyway, and any of those setups will far exceed the capability of CB. But this is just my situation.

Sorry for the long, possibly unhelpful post. If anyone out there can correct me on any of this I would be grateful!

 

Good post. You hit the nail on the head in that most, if not all people on here who run a CB is just for basic trail communication, where you'll be at most half a mile apart (at least in my group). If anyone is wanting any considerable amount of range, their best bet is to get their license and get a ham radio.

 

My dad (who worked as a lead tech, shop manager, Motorola installer, etc) for 40 years in the telecom industry said that when I'm ready for a CB set up on my truck to just get a magnet mount for the roof of the truck.
Something about the roof acting as a big piece of metal, etc., would make it easier to set up and use?

Sounds good but someone pointed out to me that going through any type of trail with trees/low hanging shit would be really annoying having the antenna smacking everything.

Getting a radio is on my "list" but not super high on it but these threads are always educational so I'm definitely keeping tabs on how people best set up their systems for communications.

 

Might worth it to ask here : I tried to tune my buddy's antenna (wilson lil will) and swr on channel 1 and 19 are great (1.5:1) but on channel 40, it is higher than 3:1... I searched on the net but there is not much information about this issue except the one that says the antenna is too long. But with a too long antenna, can the difference between channel 1 and 40 be that big?

 

That's normal. You should find with that antenna that you end up about 1.8 to 2 swr on channels 1 and 40 about about 1.3 on channel 19. At last this is how mine always tuned.

 

With playing with its height and position on the roof?

 

Tried to get coax at store but it comes with a zinc plated metal ground braid instead of copper. Will that work?