Mobile Antenna

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KO4IPV

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I have a Larson mobile antenna 17 inch whip permanent installation going on my roof of my car need to know the best placement I wanted to install it on the rear end of the vehicle I hope that is sufficient don’t know if it matters the placement of a permanent mount antenna .
 

mmckenna

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I have a Larson mobile antenna 17 inch whip permanent installation going on my roof of my car need to know the best placement I wanted to install it on the rear end of the vehicle I hope that is sufficient don’t know if it matters the placement of a permanent mount antenna .

Antennas work best when they have a ground plane under them that is at least 1/4 wavelength in all directions from under the antenna. You can get that on the roof or the trunk.
Drawback to the trunk is that on most sedans, you have the antenna below the roof line, which will create some shadowing. It also can expose rear seat passengers to higher levels of RF energy. Metal film window tinting or defroster wires in the rear window can act like a big reflector and cause issues.

Top of the roof is ideal. Trunk lid will work, but not quite as well. You'll lose about 2dB by mounting it on the trunk. Larsen published a pretty good guide to location/mounting choices. Unfortunately it's buried in a PDF file. Here's a link to the graphic:
 
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