CB questions

As a ham radio guy that messes with cb as another comm option, I have a comment or two.

The whip may serve you better. They are easy to tune as you're just trimming a metal rod to the right length. If you mess up and trim too much, they're usually cheaper than the wrapped fiberglass antennas.

Also, like someone above stated, go with a regular PL-259 connector on the antenna. The fire ring, while nice looking, can be a PITA, especially if it's been accidentally over torqued.

Lastly, higher is better. Do you have a roof rack you can install on? If you need to go into garages often, look at the mounts that have a slip joint allowing the whip to fold flat. I plan on having at least three antennas up on the roof once summer comes and I can work w/o freezing. 1 for my uhf/vhf radio (1.5-3' tall), 1 for CB (4-6' tall) and one for APRS reporting/tracking (2' tall). The CB will be on a fold down mount so I don't break anything going into parking garages.

Just my thoughts. Have a good one and I hope you get it working soon.


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monstrousmac said:
Did you sand the paint where the bolts go through on your antenna mount, if not that is part of your problem, Should be bare metal for the bolts and washer to make contact.
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I'm running a ground strap from the antenna mount directly to the frame. I did sand the paint off at the frame where I attached the strap. I'm thinking it may just be mounted too low. This whole process is very frustrating and now I know why I haven't messed with it since I installed it...haha.

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jesse3638 said:
Just thought about something. Do you think running the ground strap along the coaxial would cause problems?

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Nope, if it were power or speaker cable I'd be more concerned about it. The shield(braided wire around center conductor insulator) is designed to either reflect electronic noise/interference or transport it to ground. Having the shield short to ground is actually done intentionally in a lot of situations. If the center conductor of the coaxial cable is shorting to anything, replace it.
 
Arrcherr said:
Nope, if it were power or speaker cable I'd be more concerned about it. The shield(braided wire around center conductor insulator) is designed to either reflect electronic noise/interference or transport it to ground. Having the shield short to ground is actually done intentionally in a lot of situations. If the center conductor of the coaxial cable is shorting to anything, replace it.
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Yep I confirmed this by undoing everything and running the ground directly outside the jeep. Same issue. Maybe ditching the fire ring cable will be the way to go. I just don't want to start throwing money at it going something works. At the very least as t I can hear. Just can't talk

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I worked on this yesterday . Used 48” copper universal ground strap recommended by Eddie . Ran it from the stud on antenna inside and to bolt inside the quarter panel trim . Seems to have done the trick although I didn’t have time to connect swr meter to test yet. Communication with another cb seemed much more clear . Strap wasn’t long enough to go through tailgate with other CB cables so for now it just goes through by hinge


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danford.lau said:
I worked on this yesterday . Used 48” copper universal ground strap recommended by Eddie . Ran it from the stud on antenna inside and to bolt inside the quarter panel trim . Seems to have done the trick although I didn’t have time to connect swr meter to test yet. Communication with another cb seemed much more clear . Strap wasn’t long enough to go through tailgate with other CB cables so for now it just goes through by hinge


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Click to expand...

Yep I’m running the same one. I ran it from the antenna stud directly to the frame. I sanded off and paint on the frame too. Checking it initially the see was down to 2.8 but then went back to being way in the red. Not sure what’s going but it’s very frustrating. I’ve checked for shorts and don’t seem to have any.


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Just wanted to follow up with everyone. I decided to relocate my ground strap and piece together some standard rg-8 (about 9' total) with pl-259 ends. When I checked the SWR it was about 1.1 on Ch. 1. I figured the firering was the culprit. Before I bought new cable I decided to hook up the firering to double check. It was at about 1.2. Long story short the new grounding strap location did the trick. After tweaking with it I have 1.25 on Ch1 and Ch40. Glad this is over..haha. However I haven't tried talking to anyone because there was no one around so we'll see how it works this Thurs or Fri.

Here is a pic of where it is now. It was at the antenna mount before.
IMAG2867.jpg

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