Advice for new setup, 379 pete

Use RG 59 coax for cophased setup, and use RG 58 or Mini 8 coax for single antenna setup, and yes there are big radios out here, some sound good and alot sound like crap, I have a Galaxy 99v2 but for the last year I have primarily been using a Bearcat 980, great receive and good transmit.

 

Speaking of cable... do not use Wilson RG8X with the FME connector. I went through all the packages that the TA had and in each one, the connector was shorted to the barrel.

 

I went ahead and installed my galaxy 949 that's got a tune up pushing 45 watts. I have a cophase set of Wilson 2000s on mirror mounts on 379 that measure art 107.9 inches apart using 18 feet of cophased rg59 made by my local cb shop here. My swrs are 1.2 on channel 1 and 1.5 on channel 40. So far as i can tell I'm getting out pretty good, but honestly i haven't really tested it yet other than to turn it on and check my swrs.

 

Whether you realized it or not, you were not operating at maximum efficiency. It may have worked good enough for what you used it for, but leaned over past 15-17 degrees and you were losing output and receive distance when talking to other vertically mounted antennas. Now if everybody you talked to was leaned to the same degree you were, then it probably had no ill effects. I'm just a layman with this stuff (although I've been fooling with CB since I was teenager and have learned a little) and won't attempt to explain it beyond that. I'll leave that to others.

 

I always wondered about this... I ran wilson 5000s and at highway speed the whips were perfectly vertical. I know only enough about radios to get myself in trouble so I wasn't sure if it had any ill effects or not.

 

I'd say if they blowed back close to vertical you were good. That has always been my assumption of how it works.

 

Wonder if op mounted a ant to his bull rack..May look odd but it will have a ground plane and if it was a tall ant he would have unobstructed signal trans/rec almost..
Use a quick disconnect for the times he needs under the hood or at night so no one steals it..

Its outta the way of his stacks to..