I did a 34 hour restart away from home this weekend, which I normally don't do, so I had some spare time on my hands. The long and short of it is that I think I've decided to mount a 102" on my trailer. Crazy, I know. It's a flatbed, so it's just one big ground plane.I haul a lot of concentrated loads, so I usually don't use all (or even most) of the trailer. I'm thinking about mounting it right in the middle of the trailer over the front axle, which is about ten feet from the rear of the trailer. My trailer has a wooden nail strip running down the middle for the length of the trailer, so I was going to cut a hole out of it and mount the antenna to one of the crossmembers. My tentative plan is to run a beefy quick-disconnect in case I have to load the whole trailer. Like this-
http://bellsouthpwp.net/b/r/breedlove1/page12.html
Instead of using a spring on the mount, I was going to use a 5" Wilson bottom shaft, and with the quick-disconnect being 1-7/8" long, that will get me pretty close to the right length. With the trailer empty, the crossmember is about 4'7" off the ground, which will have me at 13'7" overall, not high enough to worry about.
My question is about coax-is running 200 watts max through 60 feet or so of RG8x asking too much? It will be broken into two sections, one from the antenna to the front of the trailer and a SO-239 mounted on the front with the air and electric lines. Then I'd have one from the radio coming out of the back of the truck to plug into the trailer. Actually, I'll probably get a splitter so I can just switch to a mirror mount antenna when I have to remove the 102.
The trailer is grounded to the truck very well-there's the regular electric pigtail, the fifth wheel, and I have a second pigtail with another ground to operate an air dump valve.
Anybody see any problems with any of this? I've always wanted to try a 102, but never really had a way to mount one that would do it justice until I though of this. It'll be something different to try anyway. I might even put a 'coon tail on it-I hear they're good for about 14-17 horsepower.![]()
I haul a lot of concentrated loads, so I usually don't use all (or even most) of the trailer. I'm thinking about mounting it right in the middle of the trailer over the front axle, which is about ten feet from the rear of the trailer. My trailer has a wooden nail strip running down the middle for the length of the trailer, so I was going to cut a hole out of it and mount the antenna to one of the crossmembers. My tentative plan is to run a beefy quick-disconnect in case I have to load the whole trailer. Like this-