antenna ????'s

"Conventional wisdom" says that by tipping the antenna forward, you are putting the bulk of the metal in the truck below the antenna, working as a better ground plane.

While that may be true, it also pumps most of your forward RF into the road, and the rearward RF into the sky...

 

I thought they tilted them forward to withstand the sometimes grueling air speed sustained during "fast trucking" operations (70+ MPH)

 

the tilting goes back farther than that. i talked to a fwe old old timer drivers, and if you think about it, the pointing the antenna makes sense. they used to measure from the tip of the antenna to the ground at 13 ft 6 in and pointing it forward to see if they would clear the overpass.

 

The reason of the forward tilt was first done to lower SWR. When we had metal trucks the metal would sometimes cause higher SWR reading. And a slight forward till would lower it. Check it out it does work.

 

Some do it because of clearance issues too...Other's do it just because they seen someone else do it, and call it "Bull Horn" mounting so they thought that sounded "Cool" and mount theirs the same way...not a good idea by the way if you don't have to mount that way...

 

I mounted a pair of terminator 2 antennas on the factory cab mounts on the kw2000 I was driving at the time and called them my bridge finders.....

 

A lot of tri-axles in my area will run the bull horns if they are not running the shorter Firesticks.