Newbie CB setup questions

First of all, my condolences on the midland. I have that same radio and in my opinion, it's a real p o s. As soon as I can, I'm getting something else and the midland is going in the trash. It's not even worth trying to resell to some other sucker.

As far as the engine noise, I would suggest a line filter on the hot wire, same as you would do for your audio stereo if it was having similar problems. Also make sure the radio is properly grounded.

I cannot answer about the placement of the whips because I honestly do not know, but the guy is right about the line-x affecting the ground. The antennas need to have a good, positive ground also, which generally means metal to metal contact. Even paint alone will reduce ground contact. When you add a thick coating like line-x, you can kiss any ground goodbye.

 

When I said a good, positive ground, I didn't mean electrically hot grounded. I meant positive as in yes or no. Be positive it is properly grounded, making good metal to metal contact somewhere. An aluminum tool box is still metal and will still make a good ground, especially if it is bolted to the bed.

I don't know how you are intending to mount the whips, but the metal has two sides. If you are mounting it to the bed rail, does the coating extend to the underside of the rail? As long as at least one side of the mounting stud is making good metal contact you are good. Or if you are using a mounting bracket, the bolts should be good enough.

Another option is to strip the area to make a good ground contact, then once everything is bolted up, shoot it with some undercoating to seal it.

 

Co-phasing on a pick 'em up truck? You only need one antenna, sir. Co-phasing is just working against yourself on a vehicle that small.

After removing one antenna, I would get the SWR set on the antenna, "match it to the truck." I'm almost betting the FireStick needs to be trimmed down just a little bit.

 

Bad idea to cophase on a pickup. The antenna need to be about 8 ft apart for it to work properly.

You also need to get the antenna away from the back of the cab or above the back of the cab for best possible performance. Having it too close to the cab will cause reflect problems which leads to high SWR and poor performance.

Another thing, cophased coax is different the single coax. Cophased coax have 75 ohm coax per side while a single is 50 ohm.

Grounding is very important. The antenna mount needs to be grounded properly or your SWR will be through the roof (too high).

Running another ground to the radio chassis is not needed. The chassis of the radio is well grounded to the ground port already. You just need a good ground for the power cord. I find that running the positive lead to the battery or as close as possible to the battery is a better option. I like to run a heavier gauge wire for this such as 10 guage or larger.

 

Just my opinion. Get a 102" stainless steel whip, put it on your back bumper, good coax, get swr's checked and the Midland will work for a while.