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Video Rating: 4 / 5
The 102″ SST mobile whip antenna can make for an excellent CB base station antenna if you set it up with a simple ground plane. My experince has been that th…
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Great video and info. This reminds me of an old CB friend from back in my CB days 30 years ago or so. He drove a little Ford pinto with a steel whip. He would sit in his car and talk and turn/aim his car to get the best signal much like a directional beam antenna. Lol
Thanks for sharing your video/info.
That’s a good observation about the directional efficiency of an antenna and ground plane. Florida’s population lives mostly along the coast so my ground plane wires run north and south. If you put an antenna on the back of a vehicle, you have very little ground plane behind the antenna and a lot in front of the antenna. The antenna will transmit strongest in the direction with the best ground plane. A weak ground plane on one side can cause SWR’s to be higher.
Great vid; and I;m a ham.
You should do a vid on a half wave dipole; they are simple and hang it horizontally just for talking DX (Skip.) Get a piece of copper wire {468 divide by operating freq in MHZ} for the resonant length. Cut wire in half connecting (solder) center and shield on each piece. insulate the ends and stretch out horizontally above the ground. Fine tune with swr meter. Done.
That would be a great video! I’ve never done a horizontal dipole. I just found a great book at a thrift shop. “Hints And Kinks For The Radio Amateur”. Flipping through it, it’s a gold mine of “how to” and I’m pretty sure it has horizontal dipole plans as well as homebrew baluns and just about anything “homebrew radio” that could be useful. Homebuilt beam antennas. Homebuilt loops. Maybe I’ll dig into that book soon.
Yeah I love building antennas I have experimented with all sorts. A half wave antenna is going to out perform a quarter wave and dipoles are so easy to make. If you like dx look into a full wave delta loop. They can be nasty for talking “long” range skip. Once you build a dipole heck get come scrap aluminum and build a small 3 element yagi and mount it vertical for local ragchew.
Hello. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on when the spring is used with the 102″ ss whip on automobiles. I see in the video you stated ss is resonant at a different frequency than copper. Does this mean that usuing a spring with the 102″ ss whip is actually making the antenna electrically too long and negatively effecting it’s performance? In order to correct this with a spring and get the swr down do most have to trim the antenna lenght some?
I had set up pretty much the same thing you did in the video including the 108″ ground plane copper wires, but I had left the spring and ball stud mount on it usuing a cheap rg58 cable with ring connectors. I checked the swr and it was nearly perfect. I am now currently re-doing it with a so-239 stud mount and lmr400 cable and trying to decide whether to leave off the spring before I hoist the antenna back up in the air.
I guess what I’m confused about is why 102″ is working great for a base setup while 108″ with a sping seems to work fine on a automoblie.
My guess would be that the location of the antenna relative to it’s ground plane makes a difference as well as the physical dimensions of the ground plane and the materials that they’re made from create different effects.
That’s really nice! Is just two radials enough for that antenna? I’ve heard some people use three or even four of those radials. Thanks!
BTW…What’s the best angle for radials?thanks Criket!
I just measured my actual radial downward slope angles. My ground plane wires angle downward 9 degrees from perpendicular to the antenna.
I don’t know what the best angle will be because variables change from one location and rig to another. You might get better SWR’s with more or less angle.
Two seems to be enough for me but then most of the people live either north or south of me. more radials will probably give you better transmit signal strength in the directions that you point your aditional radials.
More wires might make the transmit signal less directional. Not sure if that will reduce average field strength compared to just having two ground plane wires. My field strength might be stronger in the direction of my two radials than it would be if I added more radials. Not sure
Only trim your antenna if your SWR meter tells you to. Since you have a spring to play with, you can check SWR with and without the spring and you won’t have to cut anything to understand which way to go.
I used two 102″ whips for a dipole can mount vertical
That’s really cool. How did that work?
I was thinking about trying something like that to build a beam.
please can some on help me
why do you need a mast why couldn’t you just find a way to fix the whip to the house with out the mast??
You can do this without the mast. You’ll still need a ground plane and an alectrical ground wire to the ground rod in the ground. Your ground plane wires will still need to angle downward away from the antenna.
I usually don’t leave comments on you tube, but owning CB’s for more than 29 years, I think this was a great instructional video. Thanks CrypticCRICKET!!!
Thanks and thanks for the feedback. This antenna system works well and it’s easy enough for most people to recreate. A good learning experience for first time folks. It was worth sharing so I did.
How do you power your cb? With a 12v power supply or something?
Great question. I use a 6 amp 120 ac to 12 volt dc power converter. Brand name is “Road Pro”. They’re about $30-35. retail. They work great. The 6 amp version has plenty of juice for a stock CB. Real quite power supply. It comes with a female 12 volt accessory plug outlet which allows you to wire your radio for cigarette lighter plugs and plug it into the power supply and then move the radio to your vehicle and plug it into the cigarette lighter/accessory plugin if you want to.
i live in ga and i’m going to make this using your plan ,but my house is taller than 11′ will this matter it’s about 14′ i’ll go 15′ to make my ground plane, also does ground plane need to be bare copper wire, can it be insulated untile the ends.. any info would be thankful…also would you please send me your call name on cb see if we can commucate after i get mine hook up…
As far as I know, insulated wire will work. I’ve read that it does work. Being 15″ off the ground shouldn’t matter so long as your ground plane is right. The antenna mount being about 1 foot above the eaves will give you about the right ground plane angle. Let me know when you get it up and tuned. As for talking via CB… nature will have to cooperate. I’ve talked that far and more when conditions were right. Just use Cryptic CRICKET as a call sign. There’s only one of me that I know of.
I think that is an SO-239. PL is plug, SO is socket. Maybe I’m wrong.
You are correct.