New Antenna is too long, what to do?

No you cannot just take out the 62 inch whip and put in a 36 inch whip in its place unless you want severe high swr issues and possibly a damaged radio. The coil base is not wound enough for a 36 inch whip.

Is the whip hitting stuff really that much of a concern for you? You do know its not going to hurt the whip if it snags a tree branch right?

 

Could be...What you basically did was hook the antenna up to a power source...Could be getting feedback...

Typically what you would want to do, is sand off the paint on the bed where you want to put your ground strap, and same thing on the frame, and bolt down your ground strap. (keep the strap as short as possible and try to avoid long runs) This will help your bed get a good ground to the frame and help with your ground plane for the antenna.

One other note...It's best to use flat ground braid for this, and not round electrical wire...And ground in more than one place...You can use old coax cable for ground strap...just remove the outer jacket of the coax, then pull out the center conductor wire, which will leave you with just the ground braid...Flatten it out, stick some solder on the ends and use self tapping screws to install.

 

the firestick has to be clipped take the cap off top and clip a 1/4 at a time the wilson was on a grou d plane on ur roof clip the firestick and run your grounds to your frame not ur battery radio ground is ok but antenna grounds not on battery

 

if your going to drill holes in healiner get the wilson 5000 it would be much better than that and perform better

 

well u cant sacrifice length just dont hey a 2ft wilson cuz you will get horrible reception anyhow do as dallas says in post above and us short grounds and flat braid if possible run a ground to ur frame remember ground ground ground is all about getting swrs down your wilson was made different i have used wilsons firestiks and all

 

get rid of that solder "ground wire"

You should be fine using just the steel header board

Did you drill a half inch hole?

The nylon shoulder spacer spacer on top?

Look here

http://www.firestik.com/Instl-Art/te-k-4a.gif

The bottom part called the Housing in the picture should be making metal to metal contact with your header board, that is where you sanded the paint right? the bottom?

With a header board of steel you should not need that "extra ground wire"

 

by the way, give me a good price on that wilson mag mount and Ill buy a new whip

 

I've used this before, but I left the plastic cover on and just soldered the center conductor in with the braid when I soldered the connector on.......mistake?????