Hello, I drive a 2015 freightliner cascadia and I bought a cobra ltd classic cb, my antenna are mounted to the top of my truck and they are the short blacks ones I’m not sure what brand they came with the truck, anyway my range is up to a mile and I want to get more out of it. I was wondering what the best antenna was to be able to do that? Thanks for the help!
Basically you need to remove the short antennas, run a good quality single coax to a 6 or 7 foot skipshooter antenna. Plus do some ground work on the cab known as bonding. There's a couple good threads on this forum about this exact subject. A couple of guys have spent a lot of time (and money) figuring it out.
There are two antenna on my truck one on each side, they are both a 3’ black not sure the brand or power. Could I jsut get longer antennas to get more range? Within a mile I’m told I come across clear as day jsut want more range out of it.
A rule of thumb for CB antennas are the antennas need to be 4 feet or longer. You will probably still need to do the bonding depending on the truck your driving. I would start with longer antennas first, preferably top loaded antennas.
I forgot to add the reason, the companies started to use a lot of adhesive in their panels around 2000, like in the exterior door panels and sleeper panels. The adhesive acts like an insulator, even with one or two points of grounding, there isn't enough continuity to allow for a proper RF ground above 500mw. The same problem goes for some Freightliners, the hinges in some trucks were insulated by paint under the hinge, and the bolt itself provides just enough ground to the body to allow for a DC ground to be created for the mirrors and motors to prevent ultrasonics be created and amplified into the computer systems in the truck.
