Whip antenna for CB on a Suburban

[Fight Milk]

Yes, this is correct. The reason for the center of the roof is to transmit best, you need a ground plane. the flat roof is good for 360 degree transmissions. Reception is not an issue. With the antenna mounted on the rear fender, transmission will be good out front and okay front left. Transmissions to the rear of the truck are poor at best.

To fix this, a second whip antenna on the right front fender. Not very convenient up front. So a quality center roof, base loaded antenna is a better compromise for 360* transmission.

Back when cell phones were just for rich people, carried in a suitcase, a CB was us regular folk. In my new 1974 Jimmy I bought all Hy-gain equipment. Transceiver, 18' cable and 102" whip, ball and spring. I mounted the ball mount right where you are planning, left rear corner with a plate. Yes, I drilled 4 holes in the fender of my brand new truck. I would have used a center roof antenna, but the roof was fiberglass.

This CB kicked out front! As stated, poor to the rear. A proper ground plane is as important as a good antenna.

Note: The internet also did not exist, I bought a book.

Yeah, maybe I will eventually switch to a center mounted antenna on the roof. I've read that running dual antennas directly across from each other can be detrimental if the space between them is insufficient. I think I can fab up a plate that should be more than strong enough and act as a good ground, too.

 

[Fight Milk]

You could go extreme by going the ways of a keydown rig

Get a couple of tuned linears... D&A Phantoms or White Tornado 225

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Haha! I looked it up on YouTube. This is the first I've ever heard of/seen this

 

[Fight Milk]

I use to be big into radio when I was a kid. My fascination started when dad bought a Buick Electra with factory am/fm and built in CB. I was probably 6 or 7 years old. I have had a radio in every truck I have owned.

Back when I had disposable income, I use to snowmobile a lot. We used Cb to talk between trucks. There were usually about 10-15 of us that would go on the snowmobile trips, that means 3 or 4 trucks with trailers. My wife didn’t care for the radios, her solution was hand held walker talkies. She didn’t realize how many batteries it took for a 8-10 hours trip, not to mention the limited range.

This is a picture of how I infuriated my wife! The truck was about 6 months old when I did this. As big as modern trucks are, there is little space for accessories. My wife calmed down once I told her I had already bought replacement parts from a junkyard for the stuff I cut and modified. I can easily make it look like it was never there.

Anyway, this is my setup. I have a Wilson 1000 mounted on the roof. The Wilson antennas are set up so you can easily remove the mast. There is a little plastic cap that threads onto the magnet to protect the contacts. When I need or want the radio, the protective cap comes off and the mast goes on. The Wilson 1000 is a long antenna, and my truck sits high so it does bang into things. Taking off the mast when not needed is the best option.

I do love old Buicks! I had a '65 Skylark GS 4 speed, '87 turbo Regal, and a '70 Skylark. The CB on the '70 would have been awesome.

Maybe that Wilson would be the way to go. Where did you sneak the cable in through? I'd like to avoid drilling holes, if possible.

 

[Fight Milk]

I used to use CB's a lot when I did more road travel, and when I lived in Virginia and had a boat on the bay. It was (and still is) illegal to use a marine VHF radio on land without a license (but legal to use on the water), so I always had both a CB and a marine VHF on board so I could communicate with people back at the marina (or just for more mundane chit-chat and leave the marine frequencies open). I still have the CB's, don't have a vehicle antenna at this point and since pretty much all my stuff is solo now, theres not anyone to talk to.

I'm surprised- especially out in Texas. I'd think there'd be some dead spots for cell phones where people would want another comms option.

 

[Radiohead]

I can tell you from personal experience that with a 102" mounted on the roof center has a wonderful pattern, but it will find every tree limb and low overhang and drive through becomes a distant memory. A friend wanted to try it on his class c motor home and discovered it hit all the phone line drops on the block and never made it to the feeder road.

A quality center loaded antenna on roof center with a quality mount will be sufficient for most local comms with the omni directional pattern. Tuning the antenna system properly and not going cheap on the components pays dividends. A 100w deck is sufficient, more power is not needed for trailing comms or a good old convoy and you would be surprised how well a few watts can actually do.

Another choice for mobile operations is frs/gmrs. Antenna size is not a problem but IIRC gmrs requires a license of sorts. Ham definitely requires a license so that limits who in the group can participate. CB is the value leader even with the antenna limitations. I'm partial to ball mounts for my 102 whips. Fender mounts can be made pretty stiff if yer handy.

SSB has more range than AM, but AM is good enough for close up. Either way, get on the air. It's a blast!

 

[84GMCSierra]

You could go extreme by going the ways of a keydown rig

Get a couple of tuned linears... D&A Phantoms or White Tornado 225

You must be registered for see images attach

Should be able to talk to the ISS with this rig, lol

 

[Matt69olds]

I do love old Buicks! I had a '65 Skylark GS 4 speed, '87 turbo Regal, and a '70 Skylark. The CB on the '70 would have been awesome.

Maybe that Wilson would be the way to go. Where did you sneak the cable in through? I'd like to avoid drilling holes, if possible.

On my truck, I ran the coax from the center of the roof down the center of the rear window. From there is zip tied to the floor until it reached the bolt in shifter plate for these trucks if it was equipped with the 6 speed manual trans. I drilled the hole thru that, I figured there are millions of ram trucks with automatic transmissions, no issue finding a replacement. From there it’s routed under the center console up to the radio. What holes I did drill are easy to fix, nothing is permanently damaged.

I would love to have a Galaxy, or a “real” radio, but unfortunately those are much larger. If I install anything bigger, my cupholders become useless. The smaller Uniden or cobra radios is an acceptable compromise.

 

[Matt69olds]

On a somewhat related subject: my wife and I like to go to flea markets, pawn shops and swap meets. One of the pawn shops I frequent had a brand new Solarcon A99 antenna, still in the box. I paid like 50 bucks for it. Anyway, I had it in the garage for several weeks, hidden behind my car on the far wall, out of sight, out of mind!

One day I had the car outside, my wife walks thru the garage and sees the box, studies it for just a split second, and realized what it was. She asks me what I planned to do with it, I told her one of these days I’m putting it up. She was not happy, talking nonsense about how it will look like crap on the house. Women!!

Fast forward about a month: she and the kids went somewhere and were going to be gone all day. Since I was unsupervised () my neighbor and decided to install it. If I remember correctly, the antenna is about 20 feet long, I used about 35 feet of antenna pole, bolted to the side of my 2 story house. The antenna was definitely pretty high up! If the weather was good, I had no trouble talking to people all over the country with a basically stock radio.


As for my wife, it was almost 3 weeks before anyone noticed the antenna. So much for looking like crap!!! I took the antenna down when I had new siding installed. I couldn’t bring myself to drill holes in brand new siding. Eventually, I’ll get a different antenna mount.

 

[legopnuematic]

@Matt69olds sounds like an opportunity to put up a 40 foot tower...

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My grandfathers setup. I ended up with all his CB stuff after he passed (except for the tower). I've got his Ranger 2995dx base station setup in my room but just a dipole in the attic.