hotshoe

HELP!!
I have a wilson fiberglass antenna mounted on a spare tire carrier in the bed of my Toyota. I have a ground wire to a bare metal spot on the frame of the truck. The antenna still behaves as if it is not ground. Does it matter where the ground goes on the stud mount? I have a stud through 1/4 plate, ground wire on top, then a spring and a quick release mount. Make sense? Where else shoud I look?

ldivinag

if you have voltmeter, measure the ground that way... bad crimp, bad ground, bad anything...

Nvision-Az

You have the ground wire on top of the plate, between the plate and the antenna? Isn't that normally where the insulator goes?

My grounding was always done of the bottom of the mount and also with the coax back to the radio.

|
|
_ insulator
------- mount
o o screw holes in angled part of mount
y ground wire running down to clean frame position

Hope this helps. When all else fails, use your VOM to make sure you aren't shorting the hot side to ground. That would be very bad. A cheap SWR meter would help as well.

Nvision

4Crawler

iTrader: (3)

I used to have my antenna on my rear tire carrier. It worked fine when first installed but then would go in and out of a high SWR condition. When the SWR was high, I found I could reduce it a bit with a ground cable from the base to the frame. I would still measure zero ressitance between the carrier and frame, afterall it was bolted to the bumper with a 1" steel bolt and the bumper to the frame. I finally ended up moving it to the body sheet metal and it has worked fine ever since:

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