I put a regular wire dipole in my attic, horizontal, and I get 2:1 on 1 and 3:1 on 40, so that one works, not optimally, but works..
Now I put a firestick dipole in the attic, vertical, and can't get it to work.
The firestick gives me way over 3, best guess, 5:1 across the board, ch. 1, 19 and 40....
I tried it horizontal just for the heck of it and it stayed the same.
Just to make sure it wasn't the coax, I switched them and use the one from the other antenna, and nothing changed, the wire dipole was still 2:1 and the firestick was 5:1, so the coax is good.
There is no ground on either antenna, but I figure if the wire dipole doesn't need one, the firestick dipole doesn't. The one I'm copying doesn't have a ground either, I'm copying the design from here A Stealthy Homebrew Vertical Dipole Antenna Using Mobile CB Antennas
Both firesticks are 4'
I have a 4' firestick on my car, so to do more troubleshooting I took that one off the car and used if for the hot/feed antenna, in case I had a bad antenna, but it stayed the same, 5:1 across the board. I switched the antenna's all the way around, tried everyone in every spot, nothing changed, 5:1
I didn't make my bracket for the dipoles like in the link I posted, I bought one that was made for truckers, but I still took it apart to make sure there was no short. My ohm meter showed everything to be perfect, the stud going to the down ground antenna was shorted to ground and the hot end had no continuity to ground, but it did have continuity to the center of the coax connector, so the bracket is all good...
One think I'm thinking of is that my bracket, the base of each antenna is at the same spot and they are offset buy 2", and if you look at the home made one, they are directly in line with each other and there is about 5" between the antenna's, I"m wondering if that could be causing an issue, except the bracket I have was actually made for this, it's not home made....
Right now I'm headed to Home Depot to get some ground wire, I'm thinking of running ground wires between the antenna's making it like a ground plane, I don't know what to do, this boggles my mind, it should just work.
Now I put a firestick dipole in the attic, vertical, and can't get it to work.
The firestick gives me way over 3, best guess, 5:1 across the board, ch. 1, 19 and 40....
I tried it horizontal just for the heck of it and it stayed the same.
Just to make sure it wasn't the coax, I switched them and use the one from the other antenna, and nothing changed, the wire dipole was still 2:1 and the firestick was 5:1, so the coax is good.
There is no ground on either antenna, but I figure if the wire dipole doesn't need one, the firestick dipole doesn't. The one I'm copying doesn't have a ground either, I'm copying the design from here A Stealthy Homebrew Vertical Dipole Antenna Using Mobile CB Antennas
Both firesticks are 4'
I have a 4' firestick on my car, so to do more troubleshooting I took that one off the car and used if for the hot/feed antenna, in case I had a bad antenna, but it stayed the same, 5:1 across the board. I switched the antenna's all the way around, tried everyone in every spot, nothing changed, 5:1
I didn't make my bracket for the dipoles like in the link I posted, I bought one that was made for truckers, but I still took it apart to make sure there was no short. My ohm meter showed everything to be perfect, the stud going to the down ground antenna was shorted to ground and the hot end had no continuity to ground, but it did have continuity to the center of the coax connector, so the bracket is all good...
One think I'm thinking of is that my bracket, the base of each antenna is at the same spot and they are offset buy 2", and if you look at the home made one, they are directly in line with each other and there is about 5" between the antenna's, I"m wondering if that could be causing an issue, except the bracket I have was actually made for this, it's not home made....
Right now I'm headed to Home Depot to get some ground wire, I'm thinking of running ground wires between the antenna's making it like a ground plane, I don't know what to do, this boggles my mind, it should just work.