Another Question

[1RebSoldier]

Can I put a firestick antenna into a magnetic mount on my p/u truck roof ?

[Punkin Head]

You can. I ran a Preditor 10k on a tri-mag mount for a while. some people have put 102" whips on a quad mag also.

[MDYoungblood]

I don't see anything wrong with it as long as the magnet mount is big enough to handle the antenna when driving. A 5" magnet is good for not much more than a 4ft antenna, anything longer will probably come off with a windload and anything smaller is just too short to have a good bandwidth SWR.

3's

Greg

[Buzzweiser]

Firestik antenna's are ok antennas but they are a clumsy antenna. That I mean they are stiff and really don't flex a lot so if you live around a lot of low trees you'll probably knock it off a time or 2. Not a real biggie if you don't mind it but make sure if it gets knocked off there's enough coax that it will land in the back and not come thru the back window. I've seen a couple times where guys would mount an antenna like that and hit a low branch and the 5" mag would swing back and break the back window. A spring can help solve the flexability problem but may effect your tuning some. I would suggest not going any shorter than a 4 footer. I have never had much luck with the shorter ones. 5' would be even better, but you really need a tri-mag to run that. Why not get a stake hole mount and put a 102" whip or a 7ft Firestik on it. Or if your truck is older a mirror mount with the backing plate removed and just bolt it to the stake mount. I ran one like that for many years with no problems. Mine actually fit inside the stake mount so the antenna was never in the way of anything I put in the back of the truck.

[gunner57]

Firestik antenna's are ok antennas but they are a clumsy antenna. That I mean they are stiff and really don't flex a lot so if you live around a lot of low trees you'll probably knock it off a time or 2. Not a real biggie if you don't mind it but make sure if it gets knocked off there's enough coax that it will land in the back and not come thru the back window. I've seen a couple times where guys would mount an antenna like that and hit a low branch and the 5" mag would swing back and break the back window. A spring can help solve the flexability problem but may effect your tuning some. I would suggest not going any shorter than a 4 footer. I have never had much luck with the shorter ones. 5' would be even better, but you really need a tri-mag to run that. Why not get a stake hole mount and put a 102" whip or a 7ft Firestik on it. Or if your truck is older a mirror mount with the backing plate removed and just bolt it to the stake mount. I ran one like that for many years with no problems. Mine actually fit inside the stake mount so the antenna was never in the way of anything I put in the back of the truck.

I second that. I would go no shorter than 4' on a fiberglass, or even a steel whip. Anything shorter will just not be efficient enough and performance losses will be very noticeable. Any antenna that is physically shorter than 1/4 wave will be less efficient than a 1/4 wave. That is just a fact. The only debate is how much difference it will equal. To a point, the losses may not be enough to be noticed. Go beyond that point and things go downhill quite fast. Another thing to keep in mind is power handling and bandwidth. Bandwidth isn't an issue for most, as most of us stay between 26.965-27.405. For those who play outside the normal CB frequencies, bandwidth has to be considered unless a tuner is introduced. But power handling is definitely something to pay attention to. You never know if you may want to put a little boost in your signal. Many of the fiberglass whips aren't much on taking power. There are a few that can take some fire. Many are limited to an advertised 200W, which means you shouldn't put more than 75W-100W to them safely. Everhardt advertises 2000W. But again, usually you can safely run about half of what is advertised. I do have a set of Everhardts, but I haven't put more than an FCC certified radio, with a tune up, behind mine.