I got tired of knocking my magentic wilson antenna off the roof of my 60 (great cb antenna by the way)... and decidied to relocate the antenna to the rear bumper swing out. Rear bumper swing out is powder coated. Prior to change...radio worked fine...loud volume etc ( I have an external speaker).
So anyway new setup is a firestick fiberglass 4 foot antenna, using a firestick stud mount and firestick spring for antenna too, which mates to a stainless steel right angle firestick mount. Antenna coax runs from antenna down under lip of tail gate, then up and through grommet along passenger side fender well area then comes out under rear seat to mate with cobra 25LTD radio thats mounted on the rear of my console.
Issue is that apparently squelch does not work properly now or thats my perception (unsure of underlying cause). I can turn volume all the way to high and open spuelch and the volume is very low, where as before the static noise would be very high. So then I turn squelch up enough to silecne static noise but...volume at radio speaker seems to be low still based on test transmission with talkback feature working.
I was reading the firestick web site and they made mention of ground issues with fiberglass antenaa mated to power-coated bumper. So I ran a 14 AWG cable from the antenna mount to an open hole on the frame and secured with ring terminals at each end. Not really confident of the new ground. End result is the same...no change in CB operation as described above.
Is this symtomatic of some other issue....poor ground at antenna or other problem? I realize that mounting the antenna at the rear bumper is not great but I just need it for trail use and this was the easy place to install it. Seems like I should at least get a better result than what I've described. SWR unknown at this point, I 've jsut recently made this change and was wanting to make sure it works before newyears ride coming up.
Does this issue sould familiar to anyone?
So anyway new setup is a firestick fiberglass 4 foot antenna, using a firestick stud mount and firestick spring for antenna too, which mates to a stainless steel right angle firestick mount. Antenna coax runs from antenna down under lip of tail gate, then up and through grommet along passenger side fender well area then comes out under rear seat to mate with cobra 25LTD radio thats mounted on the rear of my console.
Issue is that apparently squelch does not work properly now or thats my perception (unsure of underlying cause). I can turn volume all the way to high and open spuelch and the volume is very low, where as before the static noise would be very high. So then I turn squelch up enough to silecne static noise but...volume at radio speaker seems to be low still based on test transmission with talkback feature working.
I was reading the firestick web site and they made mention of ground issues with fiberglass antenaa mated to power-coated bumper. So I ran a 14 AWG cable from the antenna mount to an open hole on the frame and secured with ring terminals at each end. Not really confident of the new ground. End result is the same...no change in CB operation as described above.
Is this symtomatic of some other issue....poor ground at antenna or other problem? I realize that mounting the antenna at the rear bumper is not great but I just need it for trail use and this was the easy place to install it. Seems like I should at least get a better result than what I've described. SWR unknown at this point, I 've jsut recently made this change and was wanting to make sure it works before newyears ride coming up.
Does this issue sould familiar to anyone?
