Splicing RG58

[Brian McVickers]

Thanks, I'll have to consider that.

My old boat was fully bonded - partially for the use of the Single Side Band radio and even more so that a lightning strike would disipate without making swiss cheese of your hull!

Thanks again
Brian

 

[DaveInDenver]

Here is a great article on Grounding, and in particular Bonding:
http://www.k0bg.com/bonding.html

There is a good chance that the door, and possibly the carrier are not grounded properly to the vehicle body. A couple of ground straps could magically solve your problem Take a quick read this may be your answer. Even if it's not, you can only improve things by bonding the rear door and the tire carrier (and all the other doors wouldn't hurt the situation any).

-Mike

Notice what Mike is advising here. There is a difference between an electrical ground and an RF ground. Both could be the same when you measure your grounds with a meter, but to your RF signal they could be different. It is, however, a matter of efficiency between the two in the end. If you have a really solid electrical ground running from the mount to the carrier to the frame, there is most likely an OK RF ground, too. But the rest of your truck needs to be primarily grounded with respect to RF. So your roof, doors, frame, etc. all need to be at the same RF ground. This is usually accomplished by running grounding straps, but even short wire pigtails work OK to get things better. The key is the body of your truck NEEDS to be grounded and in a lot of cases the sheet metal is not grounded well. There are few bolts through rubber hockey pucks and that's about it and this is not a good RF ground. Like Mike said, put a short strap from the door to the body and from the body to the frame and that makes a big difference in SWR (which ultimately is a determination of your RX/TX range).