CB and an amp. in a freightliner cascadia

Thanks for the info guys. As far as the coax, your rite its junk. I did find that mirror bracket on line. I called the dealer, He said the same thing using that (cas1) bracket, with a 5.5' fiberglass top load antenna would do the job. I think that will be my next purchase, along with new coax. I'll post again after the instal, and let you know how it goes.

 

is this a company truck or a lease or owned

it is really hard to get these right and it takes time.... what i wil be doing is this and it all has to do with your ground plane bud there isnt one on the cascadia and a few other trucks due to most of the cab being fiberglass......

you have to take down the interior and line the entire cap with sticky backed aluminum foil...... then ground it to the body the antanaes and run new cables.... you can use the stock mounts just use new cables toss the heater under the bunk and run your cables down there... and then run a 18 foot 50 ohm to your heater.... aka your linear...


that there wil get you goin in the right direction we done this to a 2011 just here recently and fixed all his ailments toook a day of work but was well worth it man.... hope i helped a lil bit big john

 

As long as you keep the SWR's under 2.0 you can run power after that you start eating finals. But the factory antena's were only made to run the legal limit of 5 watts or a little more as most of them a pre tuned even then if you check the SWR's they will be high. You also need to keep in mind that those same antenas also, feed the AM/FM radio as well as the TV. In order to keep everything working right get a different antena setup. with good coax and soldered ends and run that seperate from all other's.

 

There are many after market ground planes that can be added to almost any antena. and that can solve most problems.I am not talking about loading coils and you will need something other than a fiberglass hot stick. A straight stick antena is omni directonal and radiate in a 360 degree lobe. all of them do. short of running a yagi/beam on a truck that is what he have to deal with.Also you dont need to do nothing more than run a ground strap, guttin the inside is more than many will deal with.This is a time tested way to insure a good ground.

 

Thanks for the info Orion3814. To answer your question, it is a company truck. That seems like more work, then I'm willing to do inside a company truck. Maybe I'll try the ground strap as Kd5icr suggested, but if all else fails I'll have your idea to fall back on. It shouldn't be this difficult to hook up a cb in a truck. Cascadia, a plastic piece of ....!

 

Hey Country, I just saw that same bracket your talking about online, and I called the dealer. He said the same thing, they seem to work best with a 5'5" fiberglass antenna. I think your on to something. I may have run some kinda ground thou, I forgot to ask that. Thanks!

 

yea, I havent really looked for them but have seen them on trucks. actually there is a ground strap for the door, that will ground that mirror arm but I havent asked any1 how their swr's ended up, but you may not have to run a extra ground, just have to hook it up and see what the swr's say. good luck, and let us know what you come up.

 

I actually just posted a complete cb setup in the forsale section. Including the mirror bracket along with antena mount and a stainless coil antenna. I was getting near 1.2swr with this grounded to the frame I ran a 18foot coax and it was getting near 9 miles on my cobra 50 anniversary edition. I will sell pkgs if intrested

I was also getting a low swr with it not grounded but dont know the numbers. The shop just told me before I grounded it that it was lowest possible without a ground.