I'm no ham nor antenna expert, but my dad is both. There are some
differences between propagation of how the two different wavelengths,
but the creation of a decent ground plane for both is the same.

When someone gave me a CB, and I couldn't get it to work well on the
vanagon, here's the advice I got from him and from searches I found on
the web:

1. Put up a full-length pole on a bumper mount bolted to the front
bumper. Remember to take it off before you go into a parking garage.
this is what I'm in the process of doing, since I want to use the CB
for emergencies and travel information, and not yacking around town, I
don't mind that the antenna is sitting in the rain gutter until I need
it. I haven't figured out exactly how I am going to mount the antenna
base to the car, so I haven't tried it on the road. Works well in the
driveway, though.

2. Take off the fiberglass luggage bucket, drill it for a
magnetic-based short antenna to poke through, mount the antenna and
then put the rack back on. there's enough metal up front, apparently,
to work pretty well.

3. A  very difficult installation showed up on a google search that
created a very good ground plane. The guy created a star-shaped pattern
of copper wire that radiated out from the center of the poptop. the
wire was glued to the top carefully. The antenna was grounded to this
wire.

Jim

On Nov 3, 2004, at 7:15 AM, Rocket J Squirrel wrote:

> Any Vanagon Westy-driving hams mounted their antenna to your pop top?
> How did you provide a ground plane?
>
> --
> Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
> 71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
> 84 Westphalia: "Mellow Yellow (The Electrical Banana)"
> KG6RCR
> -=-=-
> If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?
> ------------------------------------
>