Help understanding antenna?

No help here but looking forward to hearing others ideas and learning a bit in the process.

 

I noticed I can receive from a longer distance using a metal attenna than using a fiberglass attenna . but I noticed differences when using a converted over and peaked and tuned connex 3300 HP and a Galaxy DX 47 HP

 

I'm not quite sure I understood the original post. The bumper is one of the worst places to mount an antenna. The roof is the best place to mount the antenna. A 16-inch rubber ducky antenna bolted to the center of the roof quite often will outperform 102 inch whip bolted to the bumper. I'm not quite sure what the problem is

 

It may very well because of a concept our armed forces have been exploiting: NVIS. It stands for "Near Vertical Incidence Skywave". And some folks refer to them as "cloudburners". By being close to the ground (the actual earth) and tilting the radiating element to more nearly horizontal, what would ordinarily have been a donut shaped pattern of RF running equally out away from the antenna, now that antenna, which still radiates off it sides, is sending a whole lot of the energy straight up (well, sorta like a floodlight, rather than a spotlight.) The earth under said Humvee/Striker/Deuce-and-a-half serves to reflect a substantial portion of the RF that hits it from above, increasing the amount of energy going skyward, instead of to the horizon. In terrain that's too hilly for VHF to work, a hundred watts or less can more reliably pass traffic to and from other similarly equipped stations & vehicles.
Because the bulk of the energy is going more or less straight up and at slight angles from plumb 90 deg, and since angle of incidence equals angle of reflection (think of a laser pointer shining on a mirror from one side, and see where it reflects to), a pretty hefty dose of that (often) modest power gets reflected nearly straight downward, to hit stations in the 20- to 200-mile path.
Here's a pretty good basic explanation (certainly clearer than mine:

http://kv5r.com/ham-radio/nvis-antennas/

Either that, or something else. <-------- Handlebar's Universal Disclaimer®,
Handlebar Enterprises International, 1981 All rights reserved

 

What do you mean a volvo? Truck? Car? C303 (which I love mine)?

Rainbowed?

OH yes the hillbilly NVIS version.

Got it.

How does your little 955 fail, fail at what?

Getting out or taking the kids to the mall?

Which antenna?

The fiberglass one or the whip?

What Handlebar said is correct, it is because of the waves going straight up instead of straight out. If you were need of talking skip to communicate, then yep that would be the way you would have to set it up, but if you want to talk everywhere else locally, then just leave it up.

 

Bending your antenna over and making it lay flat is kind of like putting rubber bands on your man parts and trying to take a leak. It doesn't exactly work too well.

 

Well if you're like your handle there, dude, then I can understand the way you put it together.

One of the best movies I have seen by the way.

That said, I bought a few cars out of the police pool a long long time ago (1979), sold all except one and was thinking it would be great to have that antenna already there but when I did use the antenna, it wasn't tuned for CB but it was for something around 45 mhz. I measured it and it worked out to be just that, cut for that frequency. I was later told that it was for the old Motorola transceivers which were also sold at the auction.