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Is anyone here familiar with No Ground Plane antennas for CB, in particular the Firestik?
I can't seem to get mine adjusted to an acceptably low SWR at channels 1 and 40, even though I can get it to about 1.3 on Ch. 20. The best I can do seems to be around 2.6 at either end.
I have a 3' NGP Firestik II mounted with a spring on their stainless mirror bracket to a pair of Yakima wrap-arounds on the back of my Load Warrior. It's the highest point on the truck. At the advice of Firestik I tried additional insulation of the ring connector from the mount by adding 2 nylon washers, that helped but not enough. Everything is in the proper position.
Using the complete SS mirror mount is worse, so is running without the nylon washers. I'm not at either end of the adjustment screw, and besides, I have an almost perfect bell curve for SWR, just too high at the ends of spectrum. Firestik sent me a new coax, but it made no difference. They don't seem to have any more ideas, but they say that they can generally get NGP systems to about 1.5 - 1.7 at Ch. 1 and 40.
Before I ditch the NGP system and just buy a regular antenna and run a line to ground the mount, I thought I would check to see if anyone here has a better idea. I got the NGP system to avoid having to run a ground line for the mount, as I understand that just brings in other issues such as possible interference like noise from fuel pumps etc.
Can anyone help?
Thanks - Frank B.
I can't seem to get mine adjusted to an acceptably low SWR at channels 1 and 40, even though I can get it to about 1.3 on Ch. 20. The best I can do seems to be around 2.6 at either end.
I have a 3' NGP Firestik II mounted with a spring on their stainless mirror bracket to a pair of Yakima wrap-arounds on the back of my Load Warrior. It's the highest point on the truck. At the advice of Firestik I tried additional insulation of the ring connector from the mount by adding 2 nylon washers, that helped but not enough. Everything is in the proper position.
Using the complete SS mirror mount is worse, so is running without the nylon washers. I'm not at either end of the adjustment screw, and besides, I have an almost perfect bell curve for SWR, just too high at the ends of spectrum. Firestik sent me a new coax, but it made no difference. They don't seem to have any more ideas, but they say that they can generally get NGP systems to about 1.5 - 1.7 at Ch. 1 and 40.
Before I ditch the NGP system and just buy a regular antenna and run a line to ground the mount, I thought I would check to see if anyone here has a better idea. I got the NGP system to avoid having to run a ground line for the mount, as I understand that just brings in other issues such as possible interference like noise from fuel pumps etc.
Can anyone help?
Thanks - Frank B.