Antenna's

[ljonsey2005]

I may have been looking right at it, BUT. I am looking f or a good base antenna for the radio's that I just got: Cobra 18 Ultra, Uniden PC 68 LTW and Motorola Radius GM 300...all for free and free is good.

I see these 7 element, 5 element and such antenna's, but not as skilled in knowing the difference. Is there an easy answer?

Thanks

[coxmw]

There is no easy answer but with a beam antenna you'll need tower and a rotor. The elements will be for the wave you want to talk in. And talk in one direction you can do "flat side" and "vertical" in the direction the antenna is pointed. (If it's set up right). A99 would be a good all around antenna to start with. Let me know if I can help but this is just a short answer.

[Oscar Wilde]

I would first make sure the radios work. Beam antennas .... more elements = more of your signal in db at the receiving end. My first base settup was with an Antron 99 5/8s wave antenna .... I eventually built one bad a&& beam antenna .... army helicopter took it down though. Research constructing a long wire antenna .... I'm quite certain this will be most applicable for your intended use in the near future.

O.W.

[methusaleh]

What are your intentions with those radios? What are your limitations, if any, for a base antenna? Budget? Height or length restrictions? Etc?

In my opinion...

The Cobra is a pretty junky, worthless, old CB. Sell it if it works and put the money toward a better CB or antenna.

Any one of the PC68 family are some of the "best bang for your buck" CBs made in recent years. Ones made in the Philippines are best, but even the Chinese ones are excellent. You can tune it yourself with simple tools and a meter.

What is the frequency range on the Radius? I do not believe they ever made those in any split as low as 27MHz. And it will only do FM mode and not communicate with the CBs anyhow. Do you have Motorola programming software or a way to program it? If you do not know what you are doing, you are best to sell it and get something that will better suit your needs. For a survival situation, I would recommend against having a computer-programmed radio.

[mountainman28713]

Mr Wilde is correct. I am a disaster comms specialist for a team here in WNC. We always have a ham radio that is field programable, this is a must when you are running off of solar/battery or genset power. It will help reduce your overall load, and give you greater flexibility in comms. With this being said it is a very good idea to have a radio that is programable without the manual being present and have the ablility to send and recieve on expanded transmit frequencies on multiple bands. This will give you a larger toolkit for less money and way less headaches. And with this being said, have a few older radios around as spares, these are more easily repairable with common parts than the new digital/chip based sets and you are able to better develop your skills and finetune them on older machines.

[Defcon090]

Anyone here have experience with a coaxial dipole antenna called a double bazooka? I made one from RG58 coax back in the late 1980's for 11m and it seemed to work pretty well. Recently got the urge to build another one and looked up a couple different sites for better/different design. One site says "do not use RG58" (use RG8 or RG*x only)and another one said it's okay. Ant comments on using RG-58 for 11m and 100 watts output?

[PrairieRat]

100w out on CB/11m is ILLEGAL and annoying, but the rg58 will work fine for an antenna. http://www.cbradiomemories.com/fcc_rules_cb.htm

Per the OP, I concur with methusaleh.

Use a vertical for local CB stuff, most CB's are in vehicles sending vertically polarized signals. Use a beam for long distance where polarity isn't such an issue. Sirio makes some of the better beams at reasonable prices.

[Defcon090]

100w out on CB/11m is ILLEGAL and annoying, but the rg58 will work fine for an antenna. http://www.cbradiomemories.com/fcc_rules_cb.htm

Per the OP, I concur with methusaleh.

Use a vertical for local CB stuff, most CB's are in vehicles sending vertically polarized signals. Use a beam for long distance where polarity isn't such an issue. Sirio makes some of the better beams at reasonable prices.

Thanks for the response. I am aware of the 100 watt thing, just wanted some input as to whether this antenna would handle 100 watts. Like some marketing schemes on antenna advertisements show a wattage rating! I was also looking for a simple wire antenna that could be rolled up in a bag and installed at a BOL or temporary location which would be easy to take down to move forward. I know that when erected these wire antennas can be mounted in a inverted V fashion to get a more favorable Omni direction pattern. From what I have seen the double bazooka coax is better than a standard wire half wave dipole. Other input welcome.

[PrairieRat]

It will work, as you said before you'd already made one in the past with the same parameters. Its a "good" antenna.
If the SHTF I'll be bustin' laws & legalities too, but it had to be said.

EDIT: For field expedient antennas, I prefer (and use) end fed half wave dipoles. They can be mounted vertically or horizontally with no regard to ground, and have bidirectional qualities when used in the horizontal configuration. An end fed "coaxial dipole" is actually the simplest & best for this use, easy to make too.

[paintball]

I use a Antron 99 and have communicated with the east coast and down south

[PrairieRat]

My Dad uses one and liked it very well.
But he also has a Sirio 5/8 wave ground plane I sent him, I don't think he's used the A99 at all since getting the Sirio.
For home use at this QTH I'm on a Comet CHA250BX, which some folks call a radiating dummy load. Its only called that by people who have never owned one, or didn't know how to use a radio anyway. I had a Morse conversation with Bert/F6HKA in France on the 8th with only 30w, and we were on 10m which has slightly less propagation characteristics than CB.

[Schneb]

Just saw this and don't know the technical aspects but thought it might be interesting to drop into a thread here and see what you all thought:

from: http://survivingsurvivalism.com/tesla.htm

Thanks to The Genius of Nicola Tesla –
A Perfect Antenna for the Survivalist
by SurvivingSurvivalism.com

I'm sure if you are familiar with the name Nicola Tesla you have read enough articles extolling the genius that he was. He was the inventor of Alternating Current (AC), the radio (Marconi used Tesla's plans and experiment notes), florescent lighting, radar, radio controlled boats to name a few of the inventions of this man's genius. What we are going to talk about today is one of the master's little noticed inventions, “The Tesla Ground Wave Antenna”, the perfect antenna for the survivalist on a tight budget (and who isn't!?!?!).
The Tesla Ground Wave Antenna breaks nearly all the rules of antenna theory. This antenna is very very simple using only a couple of parts, and is extraordinary as a receiving antenna. Some have also used this as a transmitting antenna, with an antenna tuner for HAM and freebanding.
Using a 4 ft long piece of re-bar steel or a copper and steel ground rod, drive the ground rod into the ground so that only a couple of inches sticks out from the ground (just enough to attach a wire and a hose clamp). Use a solution of 1 cup of Epsom Salts and 1 gallon of water poured on the ground where the rod is going in. Adding salts to the ground will increase ground conductivity. With this done attach a high gauge wire (18 to 24 gauge works best) to the rod with a hose clamp. Use an alligator clip or male plug to attach the other end of the wire to your radio.
My own project to make one of these antennas went this way: Found a piece of 4 ft. re-bar steel, the type used with small cement projects. I wet the soil around where I was going to drive the steel rod in to the soil till it was soft and muddy with the Epsom Salt and water solution. I then began driving the rod into the ground while still applying the Epsom Salt solution to the area around the rod, until the rod was only sticking out of the ground about 2 inches. Then I took a piece of 24 gauge wire from an old parallel port printer cable and attached the wire to the rod. On the other end I placed an alligator clip to attach to the on-board antenna of my Grundig YB 400 receiver.
last Night with the antenna attached to the radio I was able to hear KFI radio from Los Angeles broadcasting Coast to Coast A.M. with John B. Wells very clearly without the up and down signal strength that we were experiencing before without it. In the morning I tuned into the 20 meter band (14 MHZ ) with the standard antenna of the YB400 and was able to hear all the SSTV signals at a S3 to S4, then with the Tesla Ground Wave antenna attached the receive went up to S9+. Definitely worth the effort. It only took 15 minutes and most of the time was finding the stuff I needed like wire and re-bar.
Thanks to the electronics genius, Nicola Tesla, for an easy shortwave and AM receive antenna that costs near nothing. For troubleshooting, if the antenna does not have great receive strength, check that the wire connected to the ground rod has a clean surface and it is tight. Passing that test, check the ground conductivity with an ohm meter, or simply add more Epsom Salt and water to the area around the ground rod.
Happy SWL-ing! 73s and 88s!

[m38]

Schneb, how do you build this Tesla Ground Wave Antenna?? That was a good service report you posted, but now we all want to know how to build one. Help!!

[m38]

It's amazing what you can find if you do a little internet research. Here's a link to a site with instructions on how to take advantage of the Tesla Ground Wave Antenna for receiving. I don't know and the article doesn't say if it helps with transmission.

http://www.endtimesreport.com/Ground_antenna.html