Best Antenna for Distance

You still have something seriously wrong with your setup. On less then 10 watts, I can talk more then 10 miles loudly and cleanly using a single wilson whip style antenna. When I turn up the juice to 100 watts then I can be heard more then 30 miles away.

I just put the same setup in the new truck. 2013 Peterbilt 386. Single Wilson 5000 antenna on the drivers side. 12 feet of coax. it was an 18 foot store bought coax but I had to trim it because it got damaged. SWR is sitting at less then 2:1. I could get it down further but I need to tune the antenna further and ran out of time that day. It was a pain pulling panels etc and pulling the mirror apart to feed the coax through everything. Had to desolder one end so it would fit through the mirror pipe. Also had to reground the mount in the mirror for the antenna since Pete doesn't know how to do anything.

Personally, I would forget the amp unless you want to dabble with skip a little but then you will be underpowered for the most part. That is unless everyone you talk to has an equal setup because you may beable to get out to someone but they won't beable to get back to you unless they are running power also. My amp is sitting on the shelf because it is pretty much useless for anything other then playing on skip. Sure I can get out but no one can get back to me since they are all running stock 4 watt radios. Unless they dial up their cell phone to answer me back.

 

Rat, I tend to disagree with you, I have ran a few different set ups here and they were all tuned to an swr of 1.5:1 or lower, using different antenna's, Wilson 2k, predator 10k, wilson fiberglass antenna and I have:

cobra 148 gtl w/ 250watt amp
General Lee
Galaxy 44hp
multiple cobra 29's and one with an rfx75

I never talk 30 miles clearly and I have good set ups, it's especially bad over further right on the map, I go to NJ and New England alot and I never get alot of long transmissions...



I have a friend with a 175 watt magnum and a wilson 2k and the farthest we have managed to talk was maybe 25 miles as the crow flies down around Pittsburgh...

 

Take a look at a topo map of Grafton, ND and you will see why Rat can talk 30+ miles.

Leon
(kc0iv)

 

Grafton has topography?

 

102 inch stainless steel whip can't be beat, all other antenna are built trying to be better than a 102 but never get there !

 

1/4 Wave steel whip. For the CB, that just happens to be the 102" steel.

 

Well we don't have much for hills around here but I run a lot out in the central and western part of the state. they got hills out there. I am so glad I have a cummins motor now instead of that worthless cat.

 

theres alot more misinformation here than just antenna lenght. everything depends on everything.

On my tanker I have my antenna mounted to the front of the front trailer. 36 feet of Andrews 1/2 ldf foam. I use a 102" fiberglass whip. The mount is extended in front of the trailer about 2 feet. My SWR is 1.2:1. The radiaton pattern is stronger to the rear but just slightly.

When I ran fro IWX 63' Refer I used cophased 6' francis which worked well. But with a van style trailer the trailer will block signal if you use a single antenna. I your going to run a single on a van mount it on the left side for the best results. But cophased is more efficent. This whom claim otherwise do not understand how and why there radios work, or maybe do not work.

Coils on antennas are just making up for shorter static rods. Lenght is everything. Size does matter.

 

I run a pretty tall trailer and I don't see the signal blocking issues running a single antenna.