Antenna Install Complete

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The install is finally coming along nicely. First, an inside photo of the radios under the seat (seat is back in!):

The angle iron cut down with a cutting disk on angle grinder, painted with gloss black Rust-Oleum enamel, and attached with several #12 x 1-1/2″ self tapping screws. They didn’t self tap like they were supposed to and I had to predrill them all. My Dewalt Titanium bits did not stand up to the task but Makita Black Oxide one did just fine, for whatever that is worth. I used a sawzall to cut off the ends of the tonneau rails so that the 3/8″ thick angle iron would fit between them and the front of the bed. Tonneau cover fits perfectly over it. Some 1″ x 3′ flat grounding straps were run from the top of the angle iron with a self tapping screw down to where the bed meets the frame. Ground is strong enough on the sheet metal there without having to drill into the frame, so I used that.

The Tarheel 75 antenna came with a 6′ chrome whip that I swapped for a black 32″ one. I know that this will hurt performance, but am carrying the 6′ whip in the bed for whenever I want to change them out. The thin black 32″ whip looks much better, aesthetically.

For whatever it is worth, this is sort of the front view. The antenna on the fender is the Larsen NMO2/70, and you can see the black whip for the Tarheel clearly here. It is just slightly taller than the fiberglass Firestiks for the scanner (passenger side) and CB.

Tested the TurboTuner2 and getting a SWR of between 1.0 and 1.5 – it doesn’t give you a decimal readout, but an interpretation on an “analog” meter.  CB is running around 1.2 on channels 1 and 40. I’m getting some interference between the CB and the TS-480HX around the 27mhz range, which I guess makes sense. I need to figure that out at some point.