Mouting antenna on Bumper

[Little Reb]

I was wondering how a 102" SS whip would work mounted to the rear bumper of my truck say on the passenger side. I would prolly have to run around 30 ft of mini 8x. Be running my 2 pill box and the RA radio all be ordering wensday. What y'all think? Be better to put a mag Wilson on roof or something??? Up for suggestions. Thanks, Dustin

[bignicker555]

i run a 102" whip on the passenger side rear bumper and it seems to be workin pretty well. I just had problems getting my swr down but now that there good it seems like a pretty good place to put it.

[Little Reb]

also kinda curious about band spread? I know thell keep low SWR's on 11 meter but what about 10m and such?

[Phaze91460]

After this weekend I would say go with a mag mount on the roof. If you mount a stainless steel whip on the bumper it would be left or right which will skew your broadcast pattern off at an angle. mounting on your roof will give you as close to omni directional as you are going to get on a truck. We checked my pattern at the break and I was showing almost equil front to rear and a little less on the sides. What this means is if you are talking to someone and have a good signal, turning the corner could end your conversation.

[5H Outlaw]

I agree...that would be very directional. I know a guy that runs a whip right in the middle behind the cab, and he's pretty happy with that.

[Phaze91460]

I have seen that and if you want to run the whip there you would get a better TX RX front to rear. Just have to do something to stop that whip from whipping.

I saw one of those the other day on a truck at the stake rail, was blowin at 70 mph almost flat with the bed. Cant be good for much when driving.

[231]

Directional isn't always a bad thing. We used to find people that way. We'd mount an antenna on the back portion of the rig and point the rig for the strongest signal. We'd typically try and triangulate, and before you know it we had a small area to begin looking for antennas.

I don't care much for bumper mounts myself. Especially when there are other places that will work a bit better (performance) and still look decent. One thing that can happen is side reflection. Being a continuous wave pattern on the 102" side reflection will cause a higher SWR. What I did when I ran into that is lengthened the antenna with some wire. If I recall, it was something like 12" of 12 gauge where I mounted mine (which wasn't the bumper). However, there are advantages to this also. With the side reflection I was getting, it would allow me to trim the wire to get way up stairs...almost to the 10 meter band.

[SmallTruckBigRadio]

Of choices given, I'd lean toward the Wilson on the roof.

Additional suggestions:
Wilson through the roof
Predator 10K stake hole,
Predator 10K, or Wilson 2000 mounted on tool box behind the cab.

I know a guy who has a Predator 10K, center mounted behind the cab on a 1" Stainless Steel pipe, and he loves it!