CB Antenna mounts etc.
- Thread starter MARSHALLMAY
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MARSHALLMAY
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i have that same cobra all in one, it works great and is just as strong as all other cb's. BTW i went to one of those hole in the wall cb shops along the interstate, and the dude is a total guru and was trying to sell me what he wanted, not what i wanted. But he said for best performance for a suv. You need a roof mount-base load antenna, with a 102" whip in the center of the roof. I don't think that would look good, and i already had an idea of what I wanted.
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Gangus2006
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Im going to mount it in between the lights. so it wont hit that, and when it sways back, itll hit the top bar of the grille guard, so it wont hit the grille or bug guard.bflooks said:
MARSHALLMAY
New member
an antenna floping around on the grille guard would annoy the heck out of me...
kglueck
New member
MARSHALLMAY said:
I can hear it now...with crosswinds/etc...*ding* *ding* *ding*....
regarding the 102" whip in the center of the roof. he's correct. it's the highest point, that has a nice flat and large groundplane around the antenna. That'll let you tune it to a (hopefully) low swr and hence get less RF reflected back from the antenna and make the antenna/radio operate more efficiently with less wasted RF energy. a 102" whip is (roughly) a 1/4 wave whip...CB frequencies are about 27MHz, which has a wavelength of 11ish meters (or 36.5 feet or 437 inches--all of which are approximations of a frequency of 27.0 MHz).
Antennas are always trade-offs, but something you don't want to skimp on if you want to have good coverage with your radio. But there are always reasons why to choose one thing over another. For example, on my ham radios, I have two 1/4 wave 2m antennas on lip mounts on the hood of my 4runner. they are not in the most ideal location, and actually, if I run the two radios as full power I run the risk of slight RF burn to myself and damage to the finals of the other radio. But I have to have them there as I park in a garage at work and have to have them clear the beams on the roof. However, I have them setup with NMO mounts, so that when I go out elsewhere, I can change antenna on my voice radio. I swap it out to a 5/8 wave antenna (a little more gain). and when I'm finished, I'll end up with some permanent mounts on the roof so when I go out on a trip, I can mount up there and just switch the antenna cable with the radio when I do that.
CB radio does indeed have some quite elegant antenna solutions as CB is limited in power output, so people have designed highly efficient antenna systems to provide lots of gain (legally...we're ignoring illegal means). In ham radio, it's a cross of that and power. There are some (like myself) that are aware of antenna gain/tuning/etc to try to make it the most efficient as possible rather than just throwing more power at the antenna. Then others just throw more power. (think Tim-the-Toolman's approach to everything)
anyways, if you're interested in the details of how antennas work/etc. check out the ARRL's Antenna Guide. Our University library has several copies, so I'm sure others do too, or it can be obtained from http://www.arrl.org/
Kevin
