Antenna grounding question.

What effect on antenna performace does providing a good ground have?

 

Ok your "coil" loaded antennas need a better grounding to achieve optimal performance because they have a stronger receive than a fiberglass antenna so better grounding will help reduce swr and "white noise". The fiberglass antennas ( most ) are made to fool the meter in to "seeing" a low swr and the reception is not as good on them therefor they will usually not pick up as much of the white noise or distant signals. Basically fiberglass antennas are open and mount and nothing will make them any better. Now I'm not saying that the xtra grounding won't help but you'll likely notice absolutely no difference. Have you ever been listening to your cb and you hear someone having a conversation and they sound like they are right next to you but you can't hear the person they are talking to? Most of the time it's because they have an antenna that is fine tuned and they have much farther reception and receiving than you do. Keep in mind many different things can affect your whole setup and something that works for me may not work for you. You could have 3 identical vehicles with identical setups and get 3 different results.

 

SAY WHAT ???????

Nothing wrong with fiberglass antennas 99% ARE COIL LOADED.
IF they are tuned to the right frequency they should work about the same as any other antenna of the same length. After you have some ground plane the increase going to lots of ground plane points is far less than that first few points or in somecases radials.

White noise ......

White noise is generated by the receiver gain stages not the antenna any noise comming in the antenna is some form of man made or background but not " WHITE " you can check for it by lissening to the radio with no antenna it sounds like a hiss ......

I run firesticks or HAMsticks on many bands ......

 

Not saying there is anything wrong with fiberglass antennas but you can't honestly believe that a firestick even begins to compare to a predator 10K's performance? I have used both and there is no comparison. The firestick is a decent antenna, the 10K is a great antenna.

 

I use 7 foot HAMSTICKS on 12 and 10 meters and a 5 foot firestick on CB.

Now a 102 inch wip on 10 meters vers a 7 foot hamstick shows less than 1/2 s unit change and part of that is the longer antenna is simply higher off the car by just over 1 foot.

I run them on 28.360 SSB and 29.600 FM and had cut 102 inch and tuned 7 foor ham sticks with results again of less than 1/2 s unit change on ssb and almost none on FM since a 7 foot antenna is very close to 1/4 wave .... I removed several turns of wire near the top to get the wip to tune up there without cuting the stinger.

Yoiu say " no comparison " but how did you measure them and what kind of firestick did you use ...... under 5 foot they go down quick .... The 5 foot one which is about 20 years old again held it's own.

 

I guess that's the real question. There are a ton of opinions, all of tem valid, but can you really hear the difference one to another? If you are talking to other nearby vehicles, I doubt that it makes much difference. On the otherhand if you are setting up to shoot skip... There is so much noise that it probably doesn't make much difference.

 

You can buy them at most any auto parts or electrical supply stores. "flat braided ground straps"

Also you can make your own out of old coax if it has the copper braided shielding they work very well. Just be careful when stripping it.

 

the best place to get it is RF parts