CB Radio

[BGerrits]

I just put a CB in my truck for the fun of it. I guess I shoulda done a little more research before I did it.

This is what I have... I have two 3foot 1000watt Bulldog antennas mounted on my tool box running to a basic Radioshack 40-chan CB. I can hear the weather channels clear, but not anyone else.

Any ideas what may be wrong?

[Springthing]

Have you had the signal strength tested to make sure the antenna are correctly cut? That could be on of the issues you have... I'm sure you will get quite a few responses. There are more than a handful of CB'ers on here. Good luck!

[ct9a]

If you haven't had the antennas tuned, you'll need to do that. You can buy an SWR meter from Radio Shack for cheap and tune it yourself. Its not too hard to do.

[tbplus10]

How did you split antenna input wire? Could it be shorted? Are all your antenna connections good?

Are the antennas mounted far enough apart so they wont cancel on each other?

Do you have a good ground plane for the antennas?
If your tool box is aluminium it might not be offering a good ground plane and you'll need to run a jumper wire to the bed or some other ground point.

Hook an inline SWR meter up and see what strength your getting on the antennas.

[BGerrits]

The antennas are spread out like 5-6 feet. I don't really know how to tune antennas, all i really know is that u need to cut some wire or something by looking at a SWR meter. The antenna cables have a special dual antenna coax cord.

[Crawdaddy]

To tune an antenna system to your radio, you extend or cut the length of the whip of the antenna until you get a 1:1 SWR match or at least match the SWR on channels 1 and 40. Channel 19 should fall right into place then.

[tbplus10]

5'to6' shouldnt cause a problem cancelling out the antennas, and it sounds like you used the correct splitter for the cable.
Check all your connections for security and you'll probably have to get an SWR meter to tune your antennas.
SWR meters can be found at most truck stops for a reasonable price ($15-$20) look for a Loves or Fina Fuel stop close to you, they usually have a good supply of CB parts.