I decided to re-put a CB radio in my truck since I had a bunch of them laying around. They are all old. I chose the Uniden Trucker because it was the best of them with ANL, SWR Cal etc. I couldn't find my old 10 dollar little antenna the same as the ones most people have (about two and a half feet with a loading coil in the middle) so I bought another one. I realized there wasn't much on CB anymore when I could hardly get anything on channel 19 so I decided to start messing around with old TV antenna rods to try to make reception better. First I basically stuck two together to make a 9 foot vertical ground plane (truck roof) dipole using the magnet from the boughten antenna. It was better than the boughten antenna for receiving but did not read quite the TX power but it was still up there.
Eventually I decided to completely destroy the aerial and made a three element, half wave yagi tuned to 27 mhz. I built it and just set it up temporarily on sawhorses not more than two feet above the ground and right next to my truck and aimed in the direction it happened to be in when I built it and when I connected it to the CB it was like every channel had someone on it. None of the signals were strong but most were clear. I couldn't believe how well it worked and it was so easy to do. I just used generic spacing for the elements and ~5% +/- lengths. Then I keyed the mike to talk but let off when I realized the TX power was way down at one watt or so and I didn't want to burn out the transmitter.
As soon as I let off I noticed the static was much quieter and I immediately knew something wasn't right. I'm sure the impedance of the antenna is way off but I didn't think it would be that bad that it would basically immediately ruin the radio.
Eventually I decided to completely destroy the aerial and made a three element, half wave yagi tuned to 27 mhz. I built it and just set it up temporarily on sawhorses not more than two feet above the ground and right next to my truck and aimed in the direction it happened to be in when I built it and when I connected it to the CB it was like every channel had someone on it. None of the signals were strong but most were clear. I couldn't believe how well it worked and it was so easy to do. I just used generic spacing for the elements and ~5% +/- lengths. Then I keyed the mike to talk but let off when I realized the TX power was way down at one watt or so and I didn't want to burn out the transmitter.
As soon as I let off I noticed the static was much quieter and I immediately knew something wasn't right. I'm sure the impedance of the antenna is way off but I didn't think it would be that bad that it would basically immediately ruin the radio.