2010 Freightliner Cascadia antenna solutions

This is how my truck is set up. Both antennas are connected to one PL-259 behind the speedo.

 

I think running a single coax from the drivers side antenna to the radio is the answer for the Cascadia problems. Somebody did that with good results and reported here somewhere.

 

here's my set-up on the Cascadia:

Had to do quite some cutting to get the SWR of the MM-7 near perfection. Running the antenna on CB, but also on 10 and 12 meter amateurbands. Radio is the FT-897D.
I'm a licensed HAM from Holland running Canada and USA

 

I've seen folks advise using a bird perch on the drivers side mirror. Is there a reason why this is better than the passenger side?

 

Keeps the antenna out of the trees, and prevents the perch from coming loose because of the direction of the threads.

 

I ran my own coax to a Wilson 2000 antenna, tried running a ground from antenna but I haven't been able to get my swr below 1:6, thought about getting a firestik or a Wilson fiberglass w/a tunable tip and a ground wire to run from the antenna to the mount, would that make a difference?

 

You people sure like beating a dead horse! My results yielded a 1.2:1 SWR With 500 watts of carrier swinging 2000 watts. There's been some good posts here on resolving the problem and yet people keep insisting they have to run ground wires, etc., to this day I still don't understand if your antenna mounting is correct how running a piece of wire off your antenna bracket is going to help because it surely doesn't. All it does is give a path for the RF to ground and a very little bit of RF at that. If you have that much RF coming down the coax, you're much better off using an isolator,to keep the RF from radiating off your coax and being used as part of the antenna system. And much less noise also. You will find my set up earlier in these posts, anymore when I see email come in I just shake my head. Quit beating a dead horse, the answer has been provided! and if anyone wants to argue the point of running a piece of wire of your antenna bracket for a ground plane, you had better Google ground plane systems and find out what the ground plane actually is. You certainly need a lot more metal beneath the antenna feed point then what a single piece of wire will provide!

 

If you are using your own cb antenna wires shouldn't that deflect your diplexer problem?

 

By the way, hooked up a firstik II, got my SWR down to 1:3 with no ground wire.