Re: [ST] Re: antenna mounts

[Bil Swartz <bil@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Jonathan West wrote:

> Incidentally, Bill, this HJC 27a unit is a POS.  Neither one of mine has
> ever worked properly for communications due to its crapo condensor mic
> which is not noise cancelling.  It does however play music and receive
> CB traffic nicely which is why I kept them.  Forget trying to talk to
> anyone on it unless you're at a stop light.

Thanks for the thoughts Jonathan, but for proper operation the antenna
must be mounted at or above the level of the frame of the bike.  Mounting
it down low looks nice, but trust me, doesn't work worth crap...trust me I
know!  

Sorry to hear you've had trouble with the Chatterbox CB27A kits.  I've had
great results, especially after paying attention to antenna mounting and
running of the coax.  When I had it on my Trophy, my wife and I
communicated fine bike to bike (she on the VFR) at up to 70-75 mph before
we had to duck down to xmit.  

Like I said, mount the antenna at or above the frame.  Run a wire from the
mount to a good ground point under the seat to ensure a good ground and
make sure the antenna is isolated from the ground.  Don't coil your coax
under the seat, run a zig zag instead.  If you must coil, tie in center to
produce a bowtie.  I found placing the mic in the cheek pad of my Arai (a
noisy ass helmet!) really helped reduce some of the wind noise picked
up.  And make sure the BNC connector on the coax (where it hooks up to the
radio) is a good and clean job, mine went loose and folks couldn't
understand me above 40 mph.  I found I wasn't getting any background
radio or static unsquelched, so there's a quick test.  I did check SWR
with a meter and attempted to tune, but best I could do was get a hair
line under 2.0 reflected.

Also be careful with the "pigtail", the short cable the connects the
helmet to the extension. These are known fragile and I broke one pinching
in when locking my helmet.

Hope something here helps!

- -- 

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