The 'Ash-Tray' CB

I like the mount you made, I went and bought a large welded piece of metal to fit mine (before I knew how to weld).  Another thing that I did was wrap my RF cable round the spare wheel mount, creating an 'ugly balun' in an effort to reduce RF interference. It's not the perfect diameter, but it's an effort.  I didn't drill my door as I like to keep things as original as possible, instead I unbolted one of the spare wheel carrier bolts and threaded the RF cable through and wrapped self amalgating tape round the cable sealing the hole up.  I've changed my wheel carrier now and the  balun' is gone. If I had enough cable, I would have made a proper one inside the rear quarter panel. The CB lives though.  Not much action on it in Aberdeenshire either unfortunately, but I always have it on channel 19 or scanning just in case.

Thanks Mike,

The M8 threaded rod came from Toolstation, the tube we had at work.

I thought about using one of the wheel carrier bolts, but decided that I would prefer to stick with the 5 just in case it starts rattling.

The hole is quite small so if I ever remove the antenna it will seal up easily and is hidden by the spare wheel.

I made a balanced/un-balanced balun for my ham HF set, but that is a dipole going in to coax and runs 100w so is to stop rf coming back down the coax. I don’t suppose I will need one on CB at 4w.

All good fun and I can lend my portable set to my pal when out on the hills.

Robin

Looks great, and I think it will provide good signals as well according to tests I seen done on similar vehicles. My garage is to low for me to put it there sadly. and trees and stuff seems to be ok where I put it, in the spare wiper hole below the windsheild.
I wouldn't worry about the hole at all.

Yes, lets crank it up to 8 watts and I can drive to the coast as well

Or better yet I have access to a ham radio room with lotsa equipment that is more capable. Just have to get licensed or get a friend to use it

I get faint signals on the evenings from italy(?) lots of yelling. especially when I drive out to the coast at nights. In between the mountains where I live, there is not much range.

We would stand more of a chance on HF. My multi-band dipole will tune up on 40m, 20m, 17m & 15m. I also have a long wire for 80m, but have a lot of noise there.

I am mostly active on FT8 at the moment, but can do SSB. My callsign is G8UZM. I am not sure which band or when conditions would be good to get across to Norway, possibly 40m?

30 years ago I used to do a lot on VHF/UHF and could get in to Norway on both bands when the conditions were right, but all of the gear is in the loft and hasn't been used for some time.

Robin

Yep, probably doesnt need a balun, but it is good fun messing about with radio.  I sometimes do 10m stuff on the freebands, interesting hearing the skip from different places in the summer time. Shame there's next to no CB activity these days.

I guess the drilling method also allows you to use a better grade cable, I just used rg58 with foam dielectric. Good enough for a CB install.

Loving the idea on this! - looks neat at the back. And as others have said its a good use of space - my little ashtray holder doubles as a mobile phone holder but jumps out if I go over a bump. Cool.