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Has anyone tried mounting a magnet mount hf antenna (Hamstick) on the top of
a metal toolbox, the kind that are used in the back of pickup trucks......just curious...I realize the best place is on top of the cab....tnx...Gary, K8BY There are two aspects to this: mechanical and electrical. Mechanically, I'd imagine you'll be OK. A Hamstick is pretty thin, and wouldn't have a large amount of wind-drag force on it. Assuming that the toolbox is solidly constructed, the magmount's grip on its roof would be sufficient to keep the antenna in place, and the drag and torque on the toolbox lid's hinges probably wouldn't be enough to matter. If I were you I'd arrange to snub the feed cable - clamp it down to the frame somehow, so that if the mag-mount does pop loose you don't find yourself dragging the antenna on the road behind the vehicle. Electrically, there are a couple of issues. For one thing, if the tookbox is immediately behind the cab, this arrangement might put the Hamstick quite close to metal portions of the cab roof or uprights. This sort of close antenna-to-body coupling tends to reduce the antenna efficiency. Keep the antenna as far away from the metal body as you can safely manage. From what I've read, HF magmounts often don't have enough coupling capacitance to give a really satisfactory grounding, even when mounted right on the roof. It's usually desirable (and often necessary) to run a short, fat grounding lead from the antenna base/feedpoint to a solid grounding location on the vehicle frame. You should probably do something like this if you do decide to mag-mount on the toolbox. -- Dave Platt AE6EO Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads! |
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