Where did you mount your antenna?

Where did you run the coaxial?

 

Built a bracket for inside rear corner. I'm not crazy about the outside brackets.

 

Not the best photo because it's pouring.
2 meter 5/8 wave with a NMO 90° bracket.

I'll end up drilling the roof for a quarter wave dual band to replace this. Had a quarter wave mag mount on the roof for a few weeks and it outperformed this by far. Probably because of the nice ground plane. I took it off because there was always condensation forming under it.

 

Mounted a 4' Firestik on a Relentless ditch light bracket. Ran a 9' Fireflex cable through the passenger firewall into the center console and a ground wire to the horn mount.



Pic is not that great but you get the idea...

 

A high gain antenna needs a ground plane to radiate efficiently - that is why the Q-wave outperformed it

 

I'm thinking of going with something like this on the passenger side fender.
http://www.durhamradio.com/firestik...durham-radio-saels-whitby-ontario-canada.html

 

I thought about switching to a half wave at the hood location, less picky about ground plane than the 5/8. I think a roof mount 1/4 Is best for me. The current antenna flops around so much... the definition of whip.

 

Personally, I do not like fender mounts. I think they look ridiculous.

The high gain will work well on the roof but it'll whistle while you drive. It works best sitting still since it'll fold backwards at speed.

 

Have you tried to ever use painters tape when drilling the hole? Makes for a cleaner cut

 

Yep! It turns into a banana at highway speeds, distorting its pattern.

How long is your VHF you have mounted on the roof? Do you know the thickness of the element near its base. Is it tapered? Or shall I ask, what antenna are you using?

Mine measures only 0.1" and tapers to about 2/3 of that near the top, poor design IMO.

 

Nah, the brass fitting covers the hole after. Always make sure to clean the roof well though and get rid of the debris as it rusts in a heartbeat

 

The rod is 33.5" and is quite thick where it joins the ferule. It is a Comprod 577-75

 

Any pics of that ground wire? I have the same setup and I am getting High SWR readings due to the insufficient ground I'm assuming . Thanks!

 

I used ditch brackets from Rago Fabrication. It needed to be drilled out some, but works good. I did clean off some paint on both the hood and the ditch bracket. SWR wasn't to bad but could be better. I probably will end up just running a ground wire off the bracket.

 

Sorry for the delay, was out of the country for a week. Here are a couple pictures of the ground wire. It's just run between the bolt through the back of the Fireflex cable down to a bracket just under the hood that is holding up something that looks like a horn. With this setup I was able to get my SWR down to around 1.4/1.5 (and could probably drop it a little more) with a Midland 75-822.




The second picture is a little unclear but the wire is running to the blue ring connector on that silver bolt.

 

Awesome, I shall give this a try! Thanks! Would be nice to get the swrs down for my 2 foot firestik that I have on for everyday driving then switch to a longer one when needed.

 

Not a problem. Let me know how you like the 2' once you get it working. My 4' is WAY too big to fit in my garage so it's spent pretty much its entire life in the bed of the truck. I would love to have something that I could keep installed full-time.

 

I did this


https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/cb-specifics.434871/page-13#post-12802200

 

Got my new astatic 636l mic along with the 3 foot firestik and some quick disconnects. Attached the ground to that "horn" location you used and that seemed to help lower swrs. However, when I tried to tune my 3 foot it had super high swr... and then I would pop on the 2 foot with the same quick disconnect setup and i would get 2.75 swr on 1 and 4 and then around 1-1.2 on the middle (10-30) channels, which is all I really care about. Confused how the 3 foot is getting high swr, yet the 2 foot is perfect(ish)... and to think I want to install a ham setup next!

By the way, the astatic mic is amazing, it's larger and built like a tank and the longer cord eliminates the leaning to talk into the little raisin box mic that comes with the uniden.

Edit- in these pictures I had the ground wire in the wrong location (on antenna bolt). Surprisingly didn't make much difference when I adjusted this but just FYI for anyone looking at this as a reference. I ended up moving the ground wire to one of the bolts connecting the mount to the hood.

 

That's a good lookin antenna setup.