is there ever a time when the stock coax should be used?

They can be tucked away if you remove stock and replace or have a shop do it for you. Stock coax is low quality and would never hook any of my radios to it. Find a good shop to replace it and will be worry free...will be much cheaper to do it yourself some soldering involved though but not hard if you know how.

 

As a rule skimping on coax is a bad thing ....

Now not knowing anything about the " Factory coax " it may be just fine remember your at 27 not 440 mhz and coax has fairly low loss at CB.

IF you feel better go do it ... and if you can MEASURE both one at a time
for loss and VSWR you can show your money was well spent thats even better .....

The ONLY coax I do not use is RADIO SHACK ANY coax that you can look through the copper braid and see the center insulator AVOID no matter if your on CB or microwave .....

 

Agreed!

I fiddled with a high SWR reading of 2:1 for about 2 months now... no matter what i did i could not get a reading under 2...

Switched out the radio shack coax and there it was 1.6:1

 

I'm not a fan of co phased antennas either never had much luck with them ...

 

In the past i always ran what looked to be a co phased setup but really one was hooked to my scanner.

 

Neither am I a fan....1 antenna is all that's needed IMO.

 

Interesting question that you posed. If you had access to two 50 ohm dummy loads, you could replace both antennas with the dummy loads and check your SWR. Should the SWR be close to 1.1 to 1 then the stock coax is good.
.
I would be suspect about the new trucks that have the AM/FM/CB all using the same coax cable. If you run into any problems, I personally would change to a simple one antenna setup and run my own coax cable that is dedicated only to CB. In other words, my coax from the single antenna directly to the CB radio. These new trucks with the coax doing multiple tasks can be a real hassle. Leave the cophased coax connected for the AM/FM radio to work.
.
As for the length of coax, 18 feet is not a requirement. If it is long enough to connect the antenna to the radio, it is long enough. Too long and you can create a problem by improperly storing the excess length. I prefer to store excess cable as a figure 8 approximately 10-14 inches in length while holding its shape with duck tape. For a stock radio with a single antenna, just about any quality coax will work. RG 58, RG 8 etc it is all good.

 

No the t660 have separate am/fm ant. And cb are separate , I have a brand new one. I use the stock coax and have had no issue.


Sent from my iPhone 4

 

The guys running the new T800s with our company, so far are still using the stock fiberglass antennas. They suck big time. You can really tell the difference. One of the driver's had a Cobra 29, nothing fancy, not P & T, BUT he had put a high quality antenna on his truck. I thought he had an expensive radio. With the stock KW antennas, you have to be within a mile to hear him.