How to best improve antenna setup

[WA4GCH]

Nothing beats a 9 foot wip ......

But that said a 5 foot firestick works well too ....

Stay away from the very short antennas most are a waist of time.

[FriedTater]

Many assume the 19 is a mutt,but with a bit of bench time they will rock out at 35 watts

If a shop only does the generic NPC mod go some where else and get a solid tune for your money.

[Turbo-T]

Originally Posted by Carolina Thunder

By the way.

To all of of those "big radio" guys who like to spend there money on power and nothing else because they think thats all it takes to get out thats fine,after all it's your money. I myself will spend my money on a well tuned radio (i do that myself),low loss coax,an efficient antenna(not all antenna work better than others) and i will blow you out of the truck stop! It takes more than just power along to talk like a big dog and until you understand this all you are doing is letting the cb tech screw you out of your hard earned money for nothing!

What kind of coax do you recommend?

[Carolina Thunder]

Originally Posted by Turbo-T

What kind of coax do you recommend?

Check out this site and you can see how the different types of coax affect the amount of power that makes it to your antenna. You will be shocked!

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.

[WA4GCH]

Originally Posted by Turbo-T

What kind of coax do you recommend?

I run in the car a good RG-8X even at 440 mhz At the house its LMR-400

[Mr. PlumCrazy]

Francis antenna is a 4 or 5 foot pencil lead center that deteriorate quickly not to include that fraying fiberglass that will get in your skin when you go to replace with in a year or two. I use a wilson 2000 that's close to 20 years old with 18ft of RG-8 on a galaxy 95T2 with a 20 year old roadking mic and I can sit in my pickup in my backyard and talk to a CB shop 52 miles away on ch 19. As for Radio shops and there is a difference between Radio shops and CB shops, CB shops will hack your radio using a Frequency counter and a cheap Dosy power meter a Radio shop uses Scopes, bird meters and have trained tech. I advise using a radio shop cause theres nothing good about taking a 4 watt radio in a cb shop and leaving with a 2 watt over modulated off frequency radio that you have to take to a shop every 200 miles. Just because it sound good when you are standing there in the TA and that cb shop guy is pointing at that dosy meter showing you how high the modulation is want you to think that is the power output remember this any radio will sound and preform better on a bench set up hooked to a base antenna talking to a truck driver in the parking lot than it will in your truck