Galaxy DX88HL

How much time effort and money do you want to spend?

 

How much would it cost to gut the whole interior And line the interior with copper foil and put the whole interior back together? Most people would consider that too much effort

 

And you can also make the thing more complicated than it really is. There is a LOT of difference in a "phased array" and a simple vertical whip cut to 27 MHZ. It is amusing to watch people working their ##* off trying to get just Oooooonnnnnne eeensy weeensy little tweek of "SWR
zzzzzzzzzzzzz" when it really isn't rocket science.

What I was trying to point out was, that many commercial, military and amateur ops operate high frequency radios with ONE antenna and ONE coaxial cable cut to no particular length while getting VERY remarkable results on ANY frequency from 1.8 MHZ to 30 MHZ. The "formula" for that mobile install is: a length that is directly proportional to the distance from the antenna to the radio! The screwdrive antenna accomplishes this goal. If the CB "gospel" was true, one could NOT operate all these frequencies unless he had about 10 or more coaxes cut to a specific length for each frequency/band he wanted to work. Now WHERE would one PUT all those coaxes, some up to 60 feet long, in a small pickup truck! There would be nowhere to put yer FEET for all the coaxes in the way!

Sure, there ARE some installs that pretty much require a specific length of coax. They also sometimes require various baluns, chokes, filters AND something CBers rarely hear of in the CB world. Ladder line! But these often involve far more complicated systems for matching feedpoint impedance, and maybe even cutting feed line to specific lengths. But not for a CB mobile whip. Most people, except for amateurs and military comm people don't know about such things as toroids, coils or capacitors to "match" antennas or even what inductance, reactance, impedance and such. So "coax lengths" seems logical. ....................and that's fine and OK to believe that. However, sweating the details, trying to get the absolutely perfect output of your CB antenna, really won't produce THAT much more for the trouble. Without worrying about "handbooks and that old CB tech down at the truckstop that told you you just GOTTA cut coax, if you'll insure that your antenna has enough ground plane, enough of a GROUND(which is DIFFERENT from the "ground PLANE"), the antenna itself is TUNED to frequency, most of the time, it will work correctly. Ignoring the other things such as reactance, etc, if these other things are done it should fall into place. As for the 50 ohms, that usually takes care of itself since the system impedance normally will BE around 50 @ 27 MHZ anyway!

So if someone wants to believe in cutting coax, that is perfectly fine. I just know that for installing normal mobile whips, I have NEVER trimmed coax to any particular length, rather, concentrating on tuning the ANTENNA instead of the feed line. It IS the ANTENNA that radiates the signal, after all, and one CAN actually make a resonant antenna work very well WITHOUT coax at all. I've done that, too!!!

 

With all the talk about getting a near perfect match I can see a tuner being used in many cases. I see slip-seaters using a tuner as one example.

leon
kc0iv

 

Yawn....

You know rabbi, I'm with gadfly on this one, you can make things over complicated for what purpose, I have no idea why.

I will repeat something that I've said a few times - it doesn't matter.

For those who think there are solutions, running a coax that is special because it has been anointed seems to me to be silly. A lot of installs out there are doing fine, many who have nothing done to their radios seem to get along well, but some times when people read some super tech thing about coax, feed points and so on, they cling to these ideas as if they were gospel not getting sometimes simple is a lot better.

 

Simple is better than most

 

Amen

Simple is a lot better!

 

"Better" is a relative term which means it needs to be compared to something.
Simple to me means less cables and no tuner

 

While I will agree with you on that.

However the way to go through the barn when standing in front of it is not to take a 400 mile trip through three states to get to the other side, but just open the door and walk through.

You and others seem to try to reinvent the wheel, taking the time to tell others what really matters, when it doesn't. Mark is in this as a business, he sells his services, and you promote him as the best'ests of the best'ests (I hate apple spell check) which he is not and when you tell us this is the only way or that is because he says it or that you read it, it complicates things a lot.

And this brings me back to a tuner, there was a thread about coils (claimed a gamma match) which is a form of a tuner. Someone posted something recently on an L match circuit, that is a tuner too but I asked which form of an L match and I don't think I ever got a reply.

So back to the reason for this post.

You guys don't need to get anal about coax, keep it simple, buy a good product that is made by belden or some other good manufacture and use it with the correct ends. Crap I've sold some idiot (he knows what I call him) 15 feet of hardline for his truck, the connectors cost more then the antenna he went out and bought. He installed it because he read this is the best you can get, when it really isn't. I didn't try hard to convince him that the belden wire I've got will do just as good but ... Sold it anyway.

Forget phasing, forget the ultra bench that is calibrated, just keep it simple.

Well got to go to work, have a long day ahead of me, and a truck to work on tonight.


Oh I've got to add this. With all of this talk about coax, no one has desribed how you test it and what it is tested with - even though I've asked a bunch of times how it is done. All I read, no one including mark knows and it isn't done with an mfj (fillin the blank) <<<< hint.