cb problems

I just recently installed this new cb in my truck.



for years I ran a cobra 29 with no problems at all. I switched to this to mount it in the dash. However now there is a ton of back ground noise and a lot of people come in un-clear sounding like the teacher on charlie brown (waawawaawaaaawa) and also I was told I sounded over modded as well. When I mounted the cb I was not thinking clearly and just wanting to get the job done, I just wired the power in with the radio. I'm going to re wire it straight to the battery and that should help with the background sound. But what about everything else? could it be because it is so close to the cd player? hope not... anyon know?

 

Tell us about your antenna.

 

Did you meter the antenna?

 

yea, shouldnt have anything to do with where you got your power from. That sounds like an antenna problem to me.

 

Going with direct connection to battery is good idea be sure to use in line fuse,also be sure to ground out radio to a well established ground any metal object, the truck frame works well. Your antenna should also be grounded this is useualy done where antenna is mounted. location of your cb looks fine. be sure your coax is not all bunched up or cuts or nics in cable last but not least swr standing wave ratios if they are to high tx will be impossibly hard to do.

Good Luck N3ZAT

 

The antenna is a 102" steel whip antenna mounted to my toolbox. I used the same antenna set up on my prerunner before I moved it to the double cab. On the prerunner I used the cobra 29 and it reached out great so I don't think it's the antenna.



as far as the swr and metering the antenna... the only knobs on the cb is the volume and squelch and channels... so there's not really anything I can change. I looked up a little on the internet and the cb is said to have "electronic tuning" I'm not really sure what that means but I assumed it tuned by itself...

 

OK, it looks like you don't have your antenna grounded. The 2nd Generation trucks have a composite bed so you need to run a ground wire from your antenna mount to somewhere on the actual truck instead of just the tool box since your tool box itself is not grounded.
Now that you have a composite bed, you don't have much of a grounding plane for your antenna to use for transmission. There isn't much you can do about that if you mount it in the bed, but the 106 in ch whip should be pretty good anyway.

As far as metering your antenna, that is not something you do with the CB itself, you will have to buy an SWR meter an attach it to the cb and the antenna in order to tune your antenna. You take it off when you are done. Ask around on here and there might be a member in your area willing to help you tune and Borrow their meter for some beer.

 

Or at least just make sure that you run a ground wire from the tool box to some bare metal on the truck somewhere.

 

well It's actually a 1st gen truck and the toolbox is bolted to the side of the bed so I figured that would be a good enough ground. am I wrong?

 

Oh, I thought I saw the composite bed on there. There must be a bed liner in there then?
Why don't you try grounding the antenna directly to a good grounding point and see how that goes. You NEED to have a good ground on your antenna or you are not going to have any luck. There may be some sort of ground between the antenna and the tool box and the bed, but try eliminating the possibility of a bad ground and see what happens.

 

Yeah there's a crappy plastic bedliner... I'll check with some wire

 

what model is your radio .... id like to get one for my truck and dont wanna have the big ass 29 either

 

it's a cobra 18 wx st ii

 

sounds good .. i think imma call up rightchannelradios and have a kit setup for me ... those guys are awesome they even have a hood mount specifially for my t-100

 

meh maybe not ..... i think ill piece somethin together myself ... gotta wait til next month though

 

Run some #6 AWG ground wire to the body-that 102" is already cut to the 27mhz band so you are good there the SWR should be fine. The problem with such a long whip is that when you are in motion, and the wind is bending that whip your SWR gets way worse. I had one and tied a fishing line to the tip and ran that to a point on the vehicle so the whip would stay perfectly upright in motion. That kept my signal reliable. The 102" whip should really only be bumper mounted or ball/spring mounted on the rear fender.

 

ha i've never heard of anyone doing the fishing line thing . maybe it's just the mix of the cb and antenna. On my prerunner:

with my cobra 29, everything worked like a dream.. I could talk for 30 miles or so depending on the weather...

Oh and I ran wire and grounded the antenna and there was no change. I'm sure it's grounded through the toolbox bolted to the bed.