How to best improve antenna setup

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.

 

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.

 

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!

http://www.ocarc.ca/coax.htm

 

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

 

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

 

One antenna is more than enough cause with 2 antennas they work against each other thus loosing alot of power

 

Not totally true. On my Pete I get better results using a cophased setup over a single setup.

 

Are the swr meters they sell in the truckstops any good?Also how does tuning the radio work do you just slide the whip up and down till you get that gloryus 1.1?Sorry for the dumb ?'s just new at these and wanted to know.

 

Ever in Dallas?

I'll be happy to pull along side of you in my Suburban and Key-Down!

Don't worry tho...There's plenty of shops in the area that can fix your radio after-wards.