Antenna location for Jeep Wrangler with roof rack

[binrat]

That's the ticket. With the head rack, the paint was some of the problem that he and I had missed at first. We ended up using old coax shielding inside heat shrink (I had a large amount of heat shrink and Matt had an old coax cable laying around). It ended working great for 10 metres and ok for vhf.
Also remember the skin effect of rf when selecting wire size. It may / may not be a factor here.

 

[mpinco]

Thinking that all those with roof racks should consider adding a ground plate to the roof rack that is correctly grounded to the radio rf ground.

Antenna Plate thread

All other mounting alternatives should be ranked accordingly.

 

[4x4junkie]

How big is the rack? If it's big enough (thinking 4x7 feet or bigger for a CB ant) it might be able to serve as it's own ground plane (you would still want to run at least one ground strap to the body or chassis regardless just for static buildup prevention though). An SWR meter should tell you if there's an issue.