| Author |
Message |
    
Burgermeister
| | Posted on Saturday, August 31, 2002 - 2:58 pm: | 
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I am running a President linclon and a palomar 225 in a slip seat operation, is there a meter/tuner that I could leave in line? Should I run it between the amp and antenna? We get the pleasure of plastic volvo, sterling, International, etc. Have spent hours, with my file and cutter to get the swr down and the next truck it's high, They have put stainless mounting bracket on the door, this stinks Any help? |
Tech808
| | Posted on Saturday, August 31, 2002 - 3:18 pm: |
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Burgermeister,
On my 2000 Pete 379 and then My 2000 Kenworth 800 I ran Copper Braid from bottom of both antennas to frame and grounded there and for power I ran 8 Gauge direct to batteries. This was the only way I could a good SWR on either of them.
Hope this helps,
Lon
tech808 |
Tech671
| | Posted on Saturday, August 31, 2002 - 11:01 pm: |
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In slip seat situations it's hard to run over 100w reliably, if not impossible. If you combine your radio with something like a KL203 then you won't be as likely to starve it for current. As to the antenna if you attatch it to a vice grip mount, clamp that to the rear center of the rig, and bolt or solder an 8 ga wire from the vice about 6-8' long to another vise, you can clamp the second vise to the frame for ground. |
Burgermeister
| | Posted on Sunday, September 01, 2002 - 10:10 am: |
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Thanks for the help,Don't want to sound dumb but what's a KL 203? Maybe get rid of the amp. Anyfeed back on an inline matcher, that works. |
Scrapiron63
| | Posted on Sunday, September 01, 2002 - 12:04 pm: |
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Burgermeister: I'm far from a tech, but have installed lots of equipment in big rigs. Let me ask first, do you run a watt/swr meter inline, or are you using the meter on the radio. That little Lincoln is a fine radio, however its hard to run one on a low drive amp like the 225. The output of the Lincoln will also change greatly from the match it is 'looking' at, but since it has a variable power knob, you can set the watts to match the amp, which shouldn't be over 1 1/2 to 2 watts, thats one reason you need a wattmeter inline. Something else I've found, and cannot explain why, but some of the solid state amps will have one power setting, like 'high' that will show good SWR, however 'low' or 'medium' might show very high SWR. And last, how high is your SWR, i've seen some rigs, while running an amplifier, if you get the SWR below 2.5, you gotta be happy, and just talk away, cause it ain't gonna hurt nutin'. Like you said, if it gets to be too big a hassle matching everything in different rigs, just forget the amp, turn the lincoln on up to about 10-15 watts and let'er go, those things will talk. scrapiron |
Burgermeister
| | Posted on Monday, September 02, 2002 - 7:29 pm: |
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Scrapiron and techs
Thanks for the help, I use just a plain old swr meter that reads the same as the meter in the radio,without the amp and some of them are flat at 1 to 1 across 40 channels, others are 3 and above without an amp. I do have a good tech in the area and he says the radio does 8W with the rf power wide open, just not enough metal in these trucks for a ground plane I guess. I have read some of the product reviews and I guess I'll have to buy a good meter, what's a good choice for a mobile application without being overkill? After reading all the old post, I'll try running my swr meter between the amp and antenna and see what I got compared to the one in the radio. Just an old truckdriver/commerical mobile radio tourist/ who is so envious of having an assigned tractor, where you could mount it and forget it.
thanks again
Jim |
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