PSV-300 and 102 inch whip question

[ElTimple]

at the risk of sounding repetitive , an antenna is a balanced system , a whip with no ground plane ( 9ft radials or counterpoise ) to work against is unbalanced. The ground part of the antenna system is just as important as the radiating element . Add as many radial 9ft ground plane wires as you can and you will see a great improvemnet

[443 Arizona]

hey do you live in a part of the city that has bad reception? power lines? industrial?
what happens with a normal AM radio?
try walking around the house with a portable AM radio and see what area gives you the best reception.
try and use that location with your CB

[Scipio Kid]

I'm no expert but very experienced. MDYoungblood, ElTimple and others have nailed it here. What you call your antenna, your whip, is only half of the antenna. The other half is the ground plane. In a mobile situation the car body is the ground plane, it's the other half of the antenna. The 102" whip is one of the easiest antennas to use for a base station as long as it has a good ground plane. That's why these experts are saying to run those 9' wires. They take the place of the car body when you mount your antenna to the side of your house. I set one up exactly like the roof picture you posted but it's on the top of an old semi trailer with an aluminum roof for a ground plane. Now some would say that large ground plane might be too much and hinder the radio. Well I don't know what theory says but three different SWR meters show a perfect SWR match 1:1, no needle deflection at all on all 40 channels. There are those who say a 1.5 or 2.0 match is good enough. Even higher readings may work, meaning they won't hurt your finals or turn on your antenna warning light but they will highly diminish your ability to transmit and receive. And that's why you have the radio in the first place, not to get a fairly good SWR match, but to talk to folks. I've got a 50 year old Navaho running barefoot on that antenna I mentioned and I can talk 40 miles, point-to-point and when the skip is rolling, I can talk all over the country.

Lights dimming when transmitting is (often) a sign of low voltage at the radio. It draws its highest current when you transmit so if the voltage source can't keep up, the lights will dim. (It's like a kink in your garden hose, you have to get rid of the kink to get back to full pressure.) But that's only a symptom. Your transmitter is struggling to put out and all other components are stressed as well because they aren't getting the juice they need to work right. . If there's a short of some kind in the radio, that could be causing the problem (the radio is simply drawing too much current). If your power source is compromised, your power feed cord is worn or too small or even the connections on the back of your radio are dirty, you could be getting low voltage at the radio and it won't work right. If you run a linear off the same power supply, that might be doing it too. Too much current on the power supply and the voltage drops. I got a tweaked Galaxy radio and hooked it up to my base setup at home where I'd been running and testing lots of radios. It did great but then I cranked up the wattage to see what it'd really do, and it did better than I figured. The meter swung to 30 watts, the lights dimmed and the circuit breaker blew. My power supply was fine for the 4-10 watt radios but couldn't handle the big draw of the Galaxy.

These guys on here know what they're talking about. Their expert advice has saved me a lot of time and money. Anyway, just my take on things. Hope some of it helps.