CB radio's anyone?

Perrysburg Dodgeboy wrote:

SoCalDesertRider wrote:

Been a few times lately on the interstate it would have been nice to find out what the traffic jams were about. Cant get that info on my fancy smart phone with internet, GPS, etc. Good 'ol CB radio is best. Always some truckers on it that are in the know.

Yep the 102' whip is the best antenna for CB use and coolest looking antenna. However it is very impractical to mount. The best location for any antenna smaller then 102" is in/on the center of the roof.

BTW not sure what kind of GPS system you are running the factory system in my wife's 200 will give you the option to reroute you around any traffic jams. That is only if the reroute will save your any time.

Don

I had ok SWR and bandwidth mounting the 102's on the rear half of the bedrails of my trucks. The bandwidth really improved when I mounted one on the rear edge of the roof, over the interior light. I've had them mounted on the center section of gull-wing cross-bed tool boxes with ok results.

I had one mounted on the corner of the roof/wall on one of my truck campers too. It was pretty high up there! Yes, it hit every overhanging thing in sight, but it worked good, once I ran a ground strap from the antenna mount, directly to the truck body. The camper was wood framed with a wood/rubber roof and aluminum siding. An aluminum roof would have made a nice ground plane for the antenna.

Maybe I'll build a headache rack for the crew cab and mount the 102 on that, or just put it on one of the rear bed rails. The truck has a steel framed, aluminum sided and roofed camper shell on it now. That would make an excellent ground plane, but I dont keep the camper on the truck all the time.

Or I could mount it through a hole in the rear edge of the cab roof, over the interior light, like I did on my old Chevy trucks. I plan to get another over-cab camper in the future, so I'll have to move the antenna later if I put it on the cab roof. Not really sure what I'll do yet.

One friend mounted a white fiberglass 102" whip to the center of his front bumper, because he had a big over-cab camper on the truck. The truck was white and so was the camper. With the big white antenna mounted on the front bumper, pointing slightly forward due to the slope of the top edge of the bumper he mounted the antenna through, the truck looked like a giant white rhinocerous! LOL :B

My other flatbed regular cab truck has a nice headache rack to mount the antenna to. Maybe I'll weld a mounting tab to the headache rack and put the 102 on that truck. It could stay permanently in that position, since I dont put anything on the utility body rack above that center area behind the cab.

I just have the standard maps, gps and navigation system the phone came with. I've tried getting instant traffic data from it, but maybe I just don't know how to do it. The phone is probably smarter than I am, LOL.