Quote:
Originally Posted by JBakerFX4
Ticked today, went out and sanded the underside of the stake hole, put it back together and now the SWR's are back to 1.6/2.2 like before I grounded everything. Only thing I've done since I got it down to 1.4/1.9 was throw paint on the frame grounds to keep the frame from rusting.
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Have you tried removing the spring and rechecking? There is only so much adjustment in the tip of the antenna. The spring shouldn't cause major issues, but all the "normal" fixes aren't doing it. Time to check out the weird stuff.
A good setup would typically be a short pieced of tinned copper grain from the mount to a good ground. 6-12" or less is best. The bed rail isn't a great location, but better than some.
As a temporary check, you might try moving the mount to the rear stake pocket. Since that will move it further from the cab, you'll add distance from a big chunk of metal parallel to the antenna that may be coupling into the antenna system. If you do this as a test, a try both with and without the spring may be a good idea.
How are you for grounding at the radio end? A good solid connection from the chassis of the radio to the truck chassis? Backing that one up with tinned copper braid isn't a bad idea there either.
Do you have 5-10ft piece of coax and a coupler? Some lengths of coax can work against you by creating a large impedance transformation. By changing the coax length slightly you can make sure you're not hitting one of those cases.
-Brian