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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 |