[Mr. Bills]

I use a Firestik Firefly antenna with Firestik medium spring. I have not found it to be any less durable than the regular Firestik antenna.

Your antenna and mount are more important than your radio in terms of tx/rx range and quality. Generally speaking, longer antennas provide better performance and are easier to tune. [I have had no difficulty tuning 4' and 5' antennas, but in my experience 3' antennas are too finicky.] The higher you can mount the antenna the better, and be sure that the mount is properly grounded.

Use a spring regardless of which antenna you choose. You want the antenna to give when you hit tree branches, the overhead at the drive-thru, etc.

You need to tune the antenna with a SWR meter to get decent performance (or go to a CB shop and pay them to do it for you). You will have poor performance and will risk frying your output transistors if you don't.

You can buy a decent SWR meter at most truck stops for $20-25. Amazon also sells them. Be sure that you get a 3' coax pigtail with your meter. A good tutorial on using a SWR meter is here: https://www.rightchannelradios.com/blogs/installation-guides/18330687-cb-antenna-tuning-instructions

Best of luck.

 

[Mr. Bills]

*WHAT mounting bracket would be recommended as ground? Preferably without drilling holes in the panels?

See this post: http://www.thenewx.org/forum/297-el...297-electronics/23487-what-mount-did-you-use-your-cb-antenna-3.html#post3082281

Diamond K400 hatch mount [A similar mount is manufactured by Comet]

Or you can use something like this and mount the antenna to your factory roof rack tubes:

or this KC HiLiTES 7308 Tube Clamp Mount Bracket for 2.25" to 2.5" Diameter Round Light Bars and Roof Racks

Or a simple muffler clamp and a piece of flat stock drilled for the antenna:

Note the ground wire in the photo immediately above. I prefer braided copper strap because RF waves travel on the surface of the wire rather than through it and strap has more surface area. The other end of the ground strap can be attached under the rear hatch, like this:

[Note: I found all of the photos and many threads discussing CB antenna mount options by googling "site:thenewx.org CB antenna mount"]