New Truck antennas

Rated for massive wattages? What's the point? You putting out what, the legal 4 or are you pushing illegal power? 99% of people are running less than 100 watts.

So being able to take "massive wattages" does what, exactly?

Spending money on an antenna rated for "massive wattages" when you can't even get CLOSE to this number is like paying 100 times more for a tire rated for 300mph on a car with a top speed of 110, going downhill.

 

He’s not yanking my chain, he heard this radio daily and noticed a difference. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the Tram, as it looked just fine on my bird 43 and an MFJ analyzer, and it worked decently and I always keep a meter inline monitoring swr’s. All my radios are properly grounded as well as my antennas with flat braid, my reflect watts are non existent, my power supply is more than adequate and my setups perform quite well. You can hear me working dx all the time on channel 28 when it’s rolling.

I like the 102” whip, it’s just not practical on my big truck. I was even thinking of setting one up with ground radials for a base station due to HOAs, but I went with a different vertical. I like that my 10k is a one time purchase and has replaceable parts compared to the fiberglass antennas I have had to replace due to tree limbs and just breaking wires over time in the wraps. $75 is cheap considering how much a Wilson 5 foot costs when I had to replace it.

 

Yea, if he charges 75 dollars that's not astronomical for what he's making. I don't doubt he makes good stuff. But his wattage ratings are sales gimmicks.

Pete there is no way you're pushing 10k watts. Nope, don't buy it. And if you get caught running that, you'll get a fine far exceeding the value of it. You can't safely get within 50 feet of that thing when it's transmitting if it was actually doing 10kw. Which I don't believe anyway.

Why? Because 10kw at 120v is 83amps. No way can you make that on a vehicle. You would need a gas generator with about a 12-14hp engine to make 83amps.

 

@my1985pete
Who’s building your 32 pill? I have several local builders who do well on channel 6, but I am looking at BBI. He has some really clean builds with quality construction. On another note, I saw a 250amp alternator for my pickup for $165 online, that’s a great price, almost what I paid for a 145.

 

That's not enough alternator to run 10kw. Not nearly enough. At most that would be able to handle about 3000 watts. And that is pushing it.

 

@BrandonCDLdriver
I am not looking to run 10kw out of any vehicle.

The man who built my amps has a suburban with 9 250amp leece Neville alternators. It’s quite possible to run 10kw or more out of a vehicle by running multiple alternator setups. It’s easier to run a big A/C box off one or two alternators but I digress. To run 3000 watts, I would either run a separate 320 amp alternator with external regulator and extra batteries, or I would run a big motor maul on a battery bank.

Just google key down vehicles and you can see some of the lengths people go to for big watts. 75kw isn’t unheard of.

 

I've seen those videos too, and been to a few key-downs and seen close to those numbers in person...10kw to 75kw plenty possible...so is brain cancer if you keep it up for any length of time...