CB Base Antenna

Yes, your grill acted like the missing ground plane that the anntenna needs to work properly.
You have several choices depending on your location and finances available.
By an antenna that looks like an old TV antenna, perhaps you mean the yagi or beam type that are often seen on towers and can rotate in all directions. There are a few available on-line if you do a google search for CB antenna or CB beam antenna, etc Using a yagi (beam) antenna depends on whether you have the space for it, and a suitable elevated location for it like a tower. They need to be raise up high - at least 1/2 wavelength up - to work their best.
Your other bae station antenna choice would be a 1/4 wave vertical like the Antron A99. It's cheap and popular. You can either mount this on the ground or you can atach it to a pole or pipe and raise it in the air as high as you are able.
In either case the best performace would depend on you adding radials to the antenna at the base in order to provide the missing ground plane.
If you ground mount it, then any length of wire will do, and if you add at least 8 or more, it will work very well.

If you mount the antenna on a pipe and raise it up high, then you will also need to add the ground plance wires, but they then would have to be cut to a specific length for them to work properly. 3 or 4 would be enough.

 

With the ANT99 antenna you do not need to add any wire for a ground plane.

Just mount it, check the SWR and go.

I have installed several ANT99 antennas and never used a ground plane or ground plane kit. The 102 inch antenna is a different story

There is currently a 10 meter contest going on over the weekend and I am using the ANT99. During the week I have made contact with Russia, Germany, Spain, Ireland and many many more countries only using the stock 100 watts of my radio.

Get the ANT99, some good coax and have fun.

http://www.copper.com/cart/product_info.php?cPath=32_33&products_id=364

$58 at copper.com

 

Yep the A-99 works fine ....

I'm also on 10 meters Lissing on 29.600 FM.....

 

Imax 2000.

 

The IMAX 2000 is a 5/8 wave antenna.

Here is my take on this antenna, remember this is MY personal experience.

I have replaced 3 of the IMAX 2000's at a friends house who lived on a farm.

He has wide open fields around him and the winds broke the antenna at the second section each time. Now, Solarcon replaced them under warranty.

After the third time it failed in the high winds, he got the replacement from Solarcon, and sold it at a hamfest since it was new in the box.

He replaced it with an aluminum Maco V58 antenna and never had another problem in the high winds.

Just an FYI, the winds in that area are so consistently high, they have over 250 wind mills now.

Never took the chance on an IMAX 2000 again.

 

Which would you say would be the better skip shooter antenna? The 1/4 wave or the 5/8 wave?

 

Actually the Imax 2000 is a .64 wave antenna. Which is why it out talks the Antron 99 in the ground wave area around you. Small consolation for tossing it's top section so often. I lost 3 in a single tornado season in Joplin in 2003. In days long ago my favorite was the LW 150 (the original was a 7/8 wave), made from the design of the Sigma IV, but that was best for local use, my best skip shooter was the Ringo. The Alpha V-5/8 was copied from the Ringo, the only difference was they took a Ringo and installed 4 radials. With either one you had a launch of around 18 degrees which did well talking skip overseas. One advantage with the Ringo was you could mount it lower without ending up on your neighbors phone system. The radials on the Alpha V-5/8 liked to cause severe radiation induction in your house power and phone wiring which ended up next door unless you mounted it high enough. The same effect occurs with the Antron 99 with the GPK-1 radial kit. People blamed the antenna when their problem was they mounted it with the radials nearly touching the roof.

http://www.video-observer.com/imax/imax2000.htm

I saw a few Antron 99's hit by lightning, they always looked nearly identical to the pics in the link below. They have a love for high voltage. Something the originator of this thread will learn if he keeps sticking conductors up in the sky on insulated poles. You must give a safe path to ground which is a lower inductance path than merely the coax running inside.

http://www.marktruett.com/a99.htm

Of course no antenna design in history loved lightning more than the ever popular Starduster which was carried by Radio Shack in the 1970's. They were great. You could unplug the coax and sit there watching sparks snap across the PL259. The myth I loved to refute was the very common practice of sticking the PL in a glass of water. People actually thought they were safe when they did that. I used to tell them to put a tea bag in the glass. That way if they survived they had hot tea while the power was out. Never could get people to see that a bolt of up to several hundred million volts at 50,000 amps which may have traveled a mile to get there could care less about an 8 ounce glass of water. People never listen so what can you do.

I think you should consider an Interceptor 10K from http://www.a1antennas.com/ . A good design but put it up on a metal pole which extends to the ground, not on a PVC pipe.

 

Maybe the newer 2000's are not built as well as the older ones? I had mine up for many years threw many storms both wind and ice,it even took a direct hit from an F1 tornado and not one problem. That's been around 4 years ago.

 

I cut one down to 52.500 MHZ and untill it became the shack lighting rod it worked just fine ........

I never got to see the sparks actoss the PL-259 but i have seen that on other ground planes it only took one hit to FUSE the 259 to the 239 female.

BTW I have a VERY large glass to put that PL-239 in its called LAKE SEMINOLE .......