pathetic range, help?

The cascadia has a poor antenna location to close to the truck and as you said poor grounding both antennas run the cb and the am/fm atleast that's how it was in the 2009 I drove the factory coax sucks as well my recommendation is not to put your money in 2 antennas and just buy one and a new coax it will take some work on your behalf but that was the only way I could get mine to transmit and receive properly running the coax is a pain in the butt but its the best option in those trucks I would put it on the drivers side if you choose to do it

 

I always used Francis 4 1/2 ft the mirror mount for it is just a metal rod with threads on it most bigger truck stops and cb shops should have them

 

Yes they will help they are the best bang for the buck that said coax would be the next issue because of the frequency splitter (or whatever its called) the factory setup has in it

 

I don't know the Cascadia specifically but is also my understanding that both antennas are CB/AM/FM stereo. If your stereo works good enough on AM/FM then put your antenna mounts back the way you found them b4 it starts leaking.

The rod Chuckie86 mentions is made to fit sunvisor bolt hole (on most brands/models) and works very well when you choose the hole w/ ground strap already in place from factory.


I'm sure you have already figured out the mfg. wasn't thinking of the driver when they designed and built it. Do like Chuckie said, and route your own coax, even if you have to use a "ViceGrip" mount off the mirror. However route your coax so its not constantly shut in driver side door. And for antenna suggestion... honestly a wet piece of string will work better than what you have. Get yourself a permanent location for the new antenna(s) then pick.

 

Antennas that transmit well should receive well, although local interference can often reduce the receive performance. Still, it's somewhat proportional. In theory, an antenna that has twice the radiated signal as one to which it's being compared should receive twice as much energy on receive. Caveat: I are not an en-gunn-ear, so that's my understanding of the math.

Ignoring, as you prefer, placement and ground/counterpoise deficiencies, then for a resonant antenna (one that's actually made to work on the frequency you want), the longer the non-coil element, the better. A "full length" antenna for CB is ~108 inches; that's an electrical quarter wavelength in physical length. Anything that makes it shorter so that it'll fit on a given vehicle will reduce the performance. With the exception of helically wound coils, like on *some* fiberglass antennas where the 108 inches (or so) is wound evenly over the length of the supporting rod, coils do not transmit or receive. They're just there to provide what can be thought of as a tuning network to make up for the missing physical length.

There are advantages and disadvantages to where an antenna's loading coil is placed, i.e., bottom, middle, or top.

But, as I gather you're already aware, placement and RF grounding/counterpoise have a *lot* to do with how well an antenna will perform, unless it's designed to work without a counterpoise, and even then the placement will still matter.

Everything else being equal, choose the longest antenna you can fit on your vehicle. I won't touch on the other factors, as you have asked us not to.

Either that, or something else. <------- Handlebar's Universal Disclaimer® (Handlebar International Services, 1981)

73

P.S. How in heck are you getting 28 watts out of a Cobra 29LTD? If the wattmeter is accurate and the radio doesn't have some sort of amplifier cobbled onto it, most of those watts won't be on the channel you've got dialed up, and probably aren't even in the same band.

 

good read.

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...-freightliner-cascadia-antenna-solutions.html