Antenna / dipole questions

Well first off 102" whips are just as good as 5 foot sticks that are wound properly. But why is it I can talk almost 15 miles with 5 watts and you need 80?

Second is a dipole is ... well a dipole

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole_antenna

 

I setup my antennas on all my trucks just the same, 5 foot antenna and didn't use an SWR meter but an antenna analyzer which checks more than just SWR. It seems to work for me, and one truck has fiberglass all over the place. I used my ten meter rig on one when I was moving it to the new driver's location a few months back and talked to a few DX stations.

Someone I think here posted a good info of what is meant by ground plane ... I don't have a link otherwise I would be very happy to share.

 

An antenna reflects its signal...to do so assume everything else is good but your ant has no reflective service(ground plane)...To increase your ground plane the ant needs grounding(non electrical)..Running a thicker ga wire from ant mount direct to trucks chassie(makeing sure all dirt/paint/grease ect) fools the ant into thinking it has its own mirror image/reflection to bounce signal off of..This lowers swt a fair bit...Hope i explained it correctly...

I am not happy with my set up on my volvo either..Bird perches are crap so its original mounting point or something on a mirror arm itself..
I have a stryker radio and predator 10k and im hearing and talkin to skip from the usa and im in canada yet a few mi away seems to be like rsc or talkin to myself..

I bought a mfj 259b and im slowly learning stuff..
Im confused with the info but i have an swr of 1.6 across the board and mfj sez .3 db loss in my coax with a 94% average match....My confusion is why my impedence is almost zero but my resistance went up from the low sixtys to high 70's to low 80's..

I have my radio powered direct from the battery,ground strap from behind mirror mount and aanother going from inside the bottom door hinge to ant mount itself...

Soooo tempted in mounting my ant up back of my cab as high as i can (no more than 13'6") and to the side of my qualcomm rec/trans disc and grounding it to muffler/chassie mount...
Im sure it will reflect but in the worst way and ill get frig all distence..

Yrs ago i had two wilson 2000 mounted to the back of an international on the metal brackets for the cab flairing and could constantly talk 10 + mi on a basically stock cobra 29ltd..Didnt end up so well when travelling through maine,discovered my whips were higer than 13'6"...i freaked out everytime i went under an over pass..Couldnt figure what was hittin till i saw my whips,they were curled up like a pigs tail ..lol..

I tell ya this whips/cb/swr/reflection/power and reception ect issues are gonna drive me to drink...

Speakin of drink...HAPPY NEW YRS *SLURPS A BEER*

 

What kind of antenna do you have? And what kind of terrain are you operating in?

 

I said what i have in my msg...Predator 10k...I am based outta eastern canada and usual route is eastern seaboard to the carolinas,up to toronto canada area and back to novascotia..Terrain is mixed...

 

I have tried using a small CB fiberglass whip as a "dipole" ground. You have to use lug mounts instead of so-239's in your ant mounts, because you want to split the center conductor and shield. Center conductor goes to the antenna, shield goes to the whip...

 

Delta 5...bruther ya got me lost now..I actually tried the di pole thing..Basically used parts of two mounts into one..My 10k goin up and 3ft fg ant goin down(they were split apart by a few inches..The fg ant was not hooked up to anythin and made squat in the diff...Im sure i did somethin wrong..With the mfj259b i got myself for xmas this cb stuff is a freakin headache now..Way more to learn when i thought i knew enuf..Seems i knew squat lol..
Im gonna have to find me a local ham radio guy to help me understand the info from my ant analyzer..

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9vhcHa6cuK4ck5OWUUwNjE5aDA/view?usp=drivesdkhttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9vhcHa6cuK4Y1BOS05ZMFdvdGM/view?usp=drivesdkThis is what I'm doing with my 07 century. All the bracketry was out of a 50% off cart at Pilot. I got a Wilson 2000 on top with a $21 1000 watt 2fter on bottom I forget the name it's the same co that makes all the hardware at pilot. 9ft astatic Rg8x coax to a stock bearcat 980ssb and a road devil mic I've read that u want the 2 antennas to be as close to aligned vertically as possible so I just finished making a 2ND bracket out of the original mirrior bracket i bought with the antenna I'm still very new to CB radio but I do lots of reading and scouring the imternets for any morsel of useful knowledge but the vast majority of info and answers I find useful come from this site. Anyway it definitely brought my SWR down big time from high 2s n3 on 40 n mid to high 2s on 1 which brings me to my next issue. Now my SWR is flat 1 on every channel the only way I can get movement on the meter is to dial up the calibration. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.