my local ham radio community!

The tower is up now. I'll add a few pictures later. All together I had help from 5 hams and Jeff, who's not a ham, but his business is radio and microwave links as well as tower climbing. He said in his world that's not a tower. He's climbed to 600 feet on the job. It was a great tower party!

There was some concern that the guy wires might throw the swr off. Wow, it tunes a flat 1:1 across all the bands with the internal tuner! I just talked to a station in Indiana while testing on 29.6mhz FM. Both of us are running 100 watts and the signal report both ways was s9+10.

I’ll never get into ham but I have been getting back into CB’s lately since I started driving part time. The trucks have radios that suck. The radio broke in my truck so I put my own portable unit in.

We have a few drivers in the area that have very nicely tuned radios. Loud and clear and when on the logging roads you need a good radio. I built a mount that I can swap between trucks and tuned the swr to where the needle barely moves. As good as it gets. I am now wanting a bit more.

I just bought a used meter on eBay so I can tune my old radio. I want to get the modulation up to 100% and possibly take the power up a tad. I don’t want a linear or anything illegal. I just want to maximize the Cobra 29 classic without adding anything to it. If I can get a super clear sound out of it and a few miles of extra range I will be happy.

I’m pretty ignorant to radios and tuning but I have been reading, and sorting through the crap, about how to peak and tune the radio. There really isn’t one good source I have found online to show me how to do it all at once. When my meter arrives I’ll bring the radio home and set it up and check everything against the meter and then adjust one issue at a time until I get it 100%.

There was some concern that the guy wires might throw the swr off.  Wow, it tunes a flat 1:1 across all the bands with the internal tuner! I just talked to a station in Indiana while testing on 29.6mhz FM. Both of us are running 100 watts and the signal report both ways was s9+10.

Everybody's getting a tower but me.

Terry

Did you assemble the tower on the ground and winch it up? That's what I did with mine 35 years ago. Now my wife is 77 and probably not able to winch it down and back up again. 25 years ago she winched up our water tower, too, while I pushed with the tractor bucket to get it started up.

Did you assemble the tower on the ground and winch it up? That's what I did with mine 35 years ago. Now my wife is 77 and probably not able to winch it down and back up again. 25 years ago she winched up our water tower, too, while I pushed with the tractor bucket to get it started up.

Yes, it was assembled on the ground and Jeff, nz2s winched it up with his jeep. Bill, kb7epr and the other Jeff manned the ropes while Dylan, kj7lvo adjusted tension on the guy wires.

[The Shooters Apprentice]

I’ll never get into ham but I have been getting back into CB’s lately since I started driving part time. The trucks have radios that suck. The radio broke in my truck so I put my own portable unit in.

We have a few drivers in the area that have very nicely tuned radios. Loud and clear and when on the logging roads you need a good radio. I built a mount that I can swap between trucks and tuned the swr to where the needle barely moves. As good as it gets. I am now wanting a bit more.

I just bought a used meter on eBay so I can tune my old radio. I want to get the modulation up to 100% and possibly take the power up a tad. I don’t want a linear or anything illegal. I just want to maximize the Cobra 29 classic without adding anything to it. If I can get a super clear sound out of it and a few miles of extra range I will be happy.

I’m pretty ignorant to radios and tuning but I have been reading, and sorting through the crap, about how to peak and tune the radio. There really isn’t one good source I have found online to show me how to do it all at once. When my meter arrives I’ll bring the radio home and set it up and check everything against the meter and then adjust one issue at a time until I get it 100%.

these new trucks don’t ground worth a crap either. I grounded out my antennas and peaked/tuned a classic 29 in the blue freightshaker I was driving and I more that doubled my CB range, probably close to tripled it. 

the western star I have no has crap radio output so I’ll need to work on it soon too if I stay in it.

I had a tower on my first house. I wasn’t a radio guy and I didn’t want the kids climbing it. A friend wanted it, so I gave it to him. He took it down and moved it to his house for a TV antenna- that was before cable and broadcast TV is terrible in this area (coming from Chicago we were used to getting several channels clearly on broadcast). He probably lost a few feet- the base was in concrete and he had to hack saw it at the top of the concrete. I never saw how it was installed at his house.

I’ll never get into ham but I have been getting back into CB’s lately since I started driving part time. The trucks have radios that suck. The radio broke in my truck so I put my own portable unit in.

We have a few drivers in the area that have very nicely tuned radios. Loud and clear and when on the logging roads you need a good radio. I built a mount that I can swap between trucks and tuned the swr to where the needle barely moves. As good as it gets. I am now wanting a bit more.

I just bought a used meter on eBay so I can tune my old radio. I want to get the modulation up to 100% and possibly take the power up a tad. I don’t want a linear or anything illegal. I just want to maximize the Cobra 29 classic without adding anything to it. If I can get a super clear sound out of it and a few miles of extra range I will be happy.

I’m pretty ignorant to radios and tuning but I have been reading, and sorting through the crap, about how to peak and tune the radio. There really isn’t one good source I have found online to show me how to do it all at once. When my meter arrives I’ll bring the radio home and set it up and check everything against the meter and then adjust one issue at a time until I get it 100%.

The shooter's apprentice makes a good point. The "antenna" is really 1/2 an antenna. The other 1/2 is the ground plane. Making sure the antenna is grounded to the truck is important, probably the best improvement you can make.  If you don't have good continuity between the antenna mount and the chassis the use of ground strap (usually woven strap) would be in order. If you're driving different trucks this would be a pita.
Since RF flows on the surface of the wire, not in the wire itself, second best would be stranded wire.
K0bg's site is best I've seen regarding mobile antenna grounding. Start with his article on bonding.
http://k0bg.com/
While he's right in his statement that it's the metal under the antenna rather than alongside it, we can't have everything. Mirror mounts aren't the ideal setup, but they can still work well.
I keep adding thoughts on here.
Properly grounded mirror mounts actually work quite well on a tractor trailer because of the massive size of the ground plane. k0bg is correct that the vehicle technically isn't the ground plane, but is a capacitor between the antenna and ground, but to keep things simple think of it as the ground plane.