all that tuning it off the car would prove is that it could be tuned... that
is, that it was working electrically and the adjustments were possible.
unless you were very lucky the tuning on the car would be different than any
off car rig you set up. i don't know about the saturn's construction, but
if its mostly plastic there may not be enough metal close to the antenna to
work properly. most mobile antennas are designed to be attached to a
reasonably large piece of sheet metal, having a thin braid or just frame
pieces as the ground plane would likely make the tuning much different than
it was designed for. if where it is mounted is plastic you may want to try
running several radials connected to the mounting bracket and just taped
inside the trunk lid or fender... of if you can do it stick a piece of
aluminum flashing inside attached to the bracket... the more metal the
better most likely.

"Patrick Gardella" wrote in message
om...
I'm stumped on a problem I've been having with a Comet UHV-4 quad band
antenna (10m/6m/2m/70cm). It's mounted to a Comet CP-5M mobile mount
on my Saturn SL1. The problem I have is that I cannot get it to
tune. I figure that it's an insufficient RF ground. I've tried
running braid from a good ground location in the trunk to the mount
(good metal to metal contact on the "car" end of the braid). Still
nothing.

So I was wondering if there would be a way to tune the antenna off the
car. I was thinking of creating a ground plane with several 1/4
wavelength wires on each of the bands, and then adjusting the antenna
to bring it into tune. That way I would know if the ground braid I
put into the car is working well enough.

Does this make sense? Or is it a wasted effort, and I should spend my
time on improving the ground in the car? What would you do?

73,
Patrick N3EO