Does anyone out there know much about CB radios? Ive got a Cobra 29 NW LTD Classic. Its a great unit and quality too. I have it running through a T to (2) 3.5 foot firesticks, one mounted on each side of my tool box. Ive got my SWR calibrated and everything is installed properly. I still feel like im not getting optimum reception, I also dont know if I am transmitting at optimum levels either. How can I check this? Does anyone know of a way to boost or improve the signals I am sending and recieving. Any help would be great, I know one of you guys knows a boat load on this topic.
thanks
jake

You can take it to your local cb shop for a "tuneup". They tweak the internal settings to max. Helps a lot depending on radio. Also check and see if you should set SWR's seperate on each antenae. Then put the tee in.

Put a 100 watt bi-linear amplifier on it.. Then you'll have what you want.. Boost on transmit and receive. Receive db gain will vary by model. Just keep one thing in mind, anything over 4 watts output on the CB frequencies is illegal says the FCC.

Dual antennas are no better and could be worse than one.. Best setup is one on the roof. The roof acts as a ground plane to project the signal best.

Yes, by all means put a amplifier on it, become an alligator .... all mouth an no ears.

For duals to work good they need to be about 8 foot apart. Then you have the problem of a match. You can't just take 50 ohm cable out of the antenna and put it into a tee and expect it to work optimially. You probably wiil need some 75 ohm cable between the antenna and the tee to get a 50 ohm match.

An 3.5 foot radiators leave a bit to be desired, even in a dual setup.

As others have said, go simple, use one antenna and with 3.5 foot one, roof mounted.

Jim

When running dual antennas you need what's called a co-phasing harness to ensure that the radio signals are arriving at the antennas in phase. Also they need to be one quarter wave length apart (about 9 feet for CB frequencies).

The other thing to remember is that with co-phased antennas your radiation (and receive) pattern is not omni-directional. Assuming the two antennas are mounted on either side of the vehicle you will have a null to each side and a bit of gain to the front and rear. Many times co-phased antennas are used on big-rigs because; a) they're mostly interested in getting their signal up and down the road, and b) the lobes of the pattern tend to be outside of the trailer and therefore are not negatively impacted by the trailer.

Your best bet is a base loaded whip mounted smack in the middle of the roof. If you're interested in a commercial quality antenna, check into a Larsen. They make a base loaded whip that can be cut for CB frequencies and uses an NMO style mount. This is a much sturdier mount than the typical 3/8 inch snap-in mount used by many CB antenna makers. An NMO mount requires a 3/4 inch hole. Also, should your radio interests change (e.g. if you get a HAM license, or join a volunteer fire department and need a land-mobile radio in your truck) you can screw any NMO style antenna onto the mount.

Another way to check what's going out (or in) is to get a SWR meter. They can be purchased at Radio Shack stores and will tell you what is going on with the radio and/or the antenna's. I have found one worth the $$.

my unit has a built in swr meter and calibrator. theyre as they should be.

my 2 cents

If you want the two antenna look :cool: , just unhook one and run coax down to where noone can see it and cut it off. Leave the other hooked up. My CB is on its way and thats what I might do. And another thing I've was told by my late grandfather is to have 18.5 or so coax between CB and antenna if you need it or not. That was when I had a cobra 25 so I don't know if that applies to the bigger 29 series.

Hope thats some help

so which one would be better to keep hooked up? passenger side or driver? i assume passenger because its a longer run from unit to antenna. Im gonna try it, the unhooking one and running the wire out of sight, aint we tricky):h .