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Wilson 5000 question

B

Bigfish

Member
Dec 29, 2006
4
0
11
Hey All,

New to the forum and first time poster. Got a question regarding the Wilson 5000 series antenna.. I've got an F250 CC LB and currently have a Firestik II (5 foot) mounted between the truck bed and cab which puts the bottom part of the antenna well below the roofline on the truck. Performance seems to be Ok with SWR adjusted out to a little less than 1.5:1 Anyhow for my question, Can I mount a Wilson 5000 in the same location and get better results? Reason I ask is because its a bottom loaded antenna and that part of the antenna will be behind the cab of the truck. I've read thru some of the posts here and apparently the Wilson antennas seem to be top of the line. What do you think?

Thanks,
Bigfish
 

wilson 5000

i have a f150 with it mounted on roof.looks kinda weird but definately gets out.swr is flat. had it down on corner of bed but could only get 1.5 and didnt seem to radiate to the front of truck.so roof is best option .mike
 
I didn't really want to go with a magnetic on top. (roof has ridges in it so I'm not so sure it would hold) Sounds as if I'd be better off sticking with the top load Firestik II. I hit a treelimb today and now my swr is running 1.1:1 on channel 20, barley over 1.0 on channel 1 and about 1.5 on channel 40. So, what do you think about the Firestik II (5 foot) and also are the swr values acceptable since 1 is lower than 40?

Thanks,
Bigfish
 
I ran a mag mount for over a year on my F350 CC Longbed with no problems, except rust (my fault for not cleaning enough).

I now have a Wilson 5000 drilled through the roof between the ridges and in the center. SWR is 1.2:1, radio is Magnum S9 into 2x2290's into 8x2879's, and everything works just fine!
 
If you can use a 6 foot Fire stick you should see some improvement. A 7 foot firestick actually will work really well, but its more than likly too long for your application. With fiberglass 5/8 waves the longer they are the better they work. So you might see a bit of a difference upgrading to a 6 footer. If you were able to use a 7 footer you would notice a difference.
You can mount a wilson 5000 in the same spot, but keep in mind it will most likly whip around more than the fiberglass whip. So depending on how close its mounted to the back of the cab it could hit at times. Also anytime the antenns gets close to any metal the swr will rise. So as long as the antenna won't hit the cab and its not too close.... try it out. Its not going to radiate as good as it would if you had it on the roof, but you should see improvement over the 5 foot firestick.
The antenna will most likjly perform better with a dirrect connection to ground insted of a mag mount, so there is some advantage to doing this.

Bigfish said:
I didn't really want to go with a magnetic on top. (roof has ridges in it so I'm not so sure it would hold) Sounds as if I'd be better off sticking with the top load Firestik II. I hit a treelimb today and now my swr is running 1.1:1 on channel 20, barley over 1.0 on channel 1 and about 1.5 on channel 40. So, what do you think about the Firestik II (5 foot) and also are the swr values acceptable since 1 is lower than 40?

Thanks,
Bigfish
Click to expand...
 
Try to get the longest Firestick you can.
As for the SWR..... thats a really decent match.. your firestick antenna is made out of thin wire and its does have alot of bandwidth. So for that reason it might be harder to tune that antenna flat accross the band.--- 1.5 on 40 and barely over 1. on 1 is fine... no worries. If you wanted you could most likly even it out to something like 1.2 on 1 and 40 with a flat match on channel 20.. You could even it out a little more if you wanted.
But the match is fine the way it is

Bigfish said:
I didn't really want to go with a magnetic on top. (roof has ridges in it so I'm not so sure it would hold) Sounds as if I'd be better off sticking with the top load Firestik II. I hit a treelimb today and now my swr is running 1.1:1 on channel 20, barley over 1.0 on channel 1 and about 1.5 on channel 40. So, what do you think about the Firestik II (5 foot) and also are the swr values acceptable since 1 is lower than 40?

Thanks,
Bigfish
Click to expand...
 
Thanks to all for your comments. For right now think I'm good to go as last night I was able to talk with a base station 20 miles away. Just gotta watch them low hanging obstacles if you know what I mean.

Bigfish
 

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