What Kinda Craziness is THIS?!?!

[DTB Radio]

I had a customer this morning with a Freightliner Cascadia tractor that turned out to have a bad antenna. This system was an external, single-antenna setup. Most customers keep their old antennas so that when they leave the tractor/company they can re-install it and keep their good one. This customer didn't want his, so I did what I usually do - take the vinyl off the base to re-solder the usually-broken-off wire and have the antenna around as a testing unit/spare, or very cheap/quick fix for a customer who is short of cash. THIS antenna HAS no loading wire. It has TWO - not one, but TWO - unequal lengths of flat braided wire soldered to the metal base. one goes straight to the top of the antenna, across it, and about an inch down the opposite side where the end is taped in place. The second braided wire goes roughly 2/3 of the way straight up the opposite side and is terminated with tape, basically straight down from the first wire's termination. The spiral winding that is normally a copper wire in other CB antennas of similar appearance is some kind of blue plastic filament that terminates about 2" below the top. The bottom end did not appear to be attached to anything, but was terminated along the bottom of the 2nd braided wire. I have NEVER seen an antenna construction like this. Can anyone explain to me how it is supposed to work as a CB antenna? Photos below: Note, the blue filament is cut/ripped off a bit at the bottom as I tried to determine if it was some kind of very light-gauge coated wire by attempting to strip it. It was about 3/4" to 1" inch longer with a clean-cut end.

 

[AudioShockwav]

That looks like a totally cheap fake.
I mean really it sure looks like they wrapped that fiber around the blank to make it look like there's a actual wire in a real antenna....
Is there any brand markings on it?
Man that's bad

73
Jeff

 

[Eldorado828]

I had a customer this morning with a Freightliner Cascadia tractor that turned out to have a bad antenna. This system was an external, single-antenna setup. Most customers keep their old antennas so that when they leave the tractor/company they can re-install it and keep their good one. This customer didn't want his, so I did what I usually do - take the vinyl off the base to re-solder the usually-broken-off wire and have the antenna around as a testing unit/spare, or very cheap/quick fix for a customer who is short of cash. THIS antenna HAS no loading wire. It has TWO - not one, but TWO - unequal lengths of flat braided wire soldered to the metal base. one goes straight to the top of the antenna, across it, and about an inch down the opposite side where the end is taped in place. The second braided wire goes roughly 2/3 of the way straight up the opposite side and is terminated with tape, basically straight down from the first wire's termination. The spiral winding that is normally a copper wire in other CB antennas of similar appearance is some kind of blue plastic filament that terminates about 2" below the top. The bottom end did not appear to be attached to anything, but was terminated along the bottom of the 2nd braided wire. I have NEVER seen an antenna construction like this. Can anyone explain to me how it is supposed to work as a CB antenna? Photos below: Note, the blue filament is cut/ripped off a bit at the bottom as I tried to determine if it was some kind of very light-gauge coated wire by attempting to strip it. It was about 3/4" to 1" inch longer with a clean-cut end.

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I drive a cascadia and I pulled off those exact same antennas from mine when I got the truck. It goes (went)from the radio to a box under the dash where both the cb and truck stereo plug in and then out to the antenna. I ran a stretch from radio to my newly mounted antenna.

Anyways, the antenna like you have pictured above is supposed to be a cb and am/fm radio antenna according to freightliner.......

I myself don't understand the mess you uncovered. I don't want to strip mine down because as you said, when I drag up it will go back on the truck.

 

[brandon7861]

I'm going to guess that the box is a diplexer and the short side of that antenna is for the FM radio. The longer wire to the top has to be too short for CB so I wonder if that diplexer box also doubles as a matching network. It would require no more components than the diplexer requires, just changing some of the values.

 

[brandon7861]

I totally believe that the blue filament was intended to appear as a wire, but might it serve a real function? Would it keep the whip from vibrating in the wind? The radials of my Sirio ground plane hum in the wind even with a noise dampening ring.

 

[Eldorado828]

I'm going to guess that the box is a diplexer and the short side of that antenna is for the FM radio. The longer wire to the top has to be too short for CB so I wonder if that diplexer box also doubles as a matching network. It would require no more components than the diplexer requires, just changing some of the values.

So what most cascadia drivers know and do is to bypass that factory installed junk and run a separate dedicated run to a mirror mounted antenna. Many have tried to use the existing junk only to find that performance suffers and fight swr problems.


Most any real cb radio user knows better than to run any factory installed parts and this antenna in the discussion shows us why.