Extended shaft for Wilson 2000

Is there nothing to be said for a good top loaded fiberglass antenna like the firestick 2? It's what I've been looking at to get the TX above my truck. 5 ft on top of a spring, mounted on my mirror. No good?

 

Evvy If Im not mistaken most of the posts here are recommending ideal ways to get the loading coil higher on the new cascadias, you have a Prostar and a 5ft Firestick would be an excellent choice for your attenna setup. You should have no problem with acheiving good swr( assuming good ground) and you should be more than satisfied with the tx and rx range especially with Galaxy 98 in line.

 

I understand what you're saying but I guess what I'm asking is, isn't getting the coil load above the roof line the best option for a big truck? (102" whips aside) If I understand what I've been researching today, top loaded stick antennas are the most efficient and get the TX output up as high as possible.
Isn't it almost impossible to get the center loaded type Wilson, k40, etc up high enough to be efficient without risking hitting bridges, etc?

 

Generally the longer the shaft used the shorter the whip length will be so consequently the overall attenna height will not exceed 5ft so it is possible to get coil up above ( or close to) roof line without making overall height too tall and hitting fixed structures.

 

The problem is you won't cut as many inches as you added to the shaft off the whip. When I extended the shaft of my oil coil antenna to 40", 33" more than it came with, I might have cut just under half that off the whip to get it right.

 

Is that on your new cascadia or a previous truck? I previously drove a Volvo and used a Wilson 2000 with 10 inch shaft, and coil was still below roof line, however the swr was 1.2 and rx and tx was excellent( 15+ miles) with a 10 watt General Lee.

 

In addition that was using the stock mirror mount like you are wanting to use on the prostar.

 

I'm currently running it isolated. Francis 4ft Hotrod on a mount attached to the mirror arm and feeding the coax through the corner window.

 

This article I read yesterday kind of turned me off from center loaded antennas. Is it not factual?

http://www.wearecb.com/the-best-cb-antenna.html

I'm trying to learn while at the same time, filter out the correct from the misleading.