RememberTheMallamo

This might be a really dumb question but...

My radio antenna broke. I have an extra fiberglass CB antenna, is it possible to use it as a replacement? If so how?

alnielsen

http://www.firestik.com/CatalogFrame.htm
Match-Maker CB/AM/FM, CB Antenna Splitter

RememberTheMallamo

Yeah I've seen the splitters but I've heard some bad reviews, plus I already have my good CB antenna already mounted with cable run through neatly. I just have an extra CB antenna and thought I could put it to use. I don't want to run a new cable or anything, just thought maybe I could get a thread adapter or something since a coat hanger would work as an FM antenna lol.

wjnfirearms

Most anything will receive FM radio signals. If you might have ever noticed, the external antennas on many bookshelf stereo systems are nothing more than thin gauge wire and they seem to work.

The issue with radio antennas is not what is used to receive signals, but what is used to transmit signals. Whatever might be used to receive will not cause damage to circuit boards internally in the radio, whatever it may be for whatever purpose. What would be used to transmit will. I'd be leery of using splitters where one radio is a transceiver even if the uint is designed for that purpose. It will affect the SWR of the transceiver and I've seen splitters in the past where it was difficult if not impossible to properly retune the SWR so as not to affect at least the transmission of the transceiver, if not the finals to keep them from becoming trashed.

V8XJDavid

alnielsen

I've run adapters before to hookup a scanner to a cb antenna. I would think that you could get an adapter at Radio Shack to make it work. If they don't have that, you could get a radio antenna extention cable, cut off the one end and solder a SO239 connector to it. Or better yet, get a cb extention cable and put a motorola style radio plug on one end.

prerunner1982

May not receive as well but it would work.

RememberTheMallamo

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I didn't even think about just getting a cable and soldering or splicing as needed. I'll check radio shack and see what I can find and I'll be sure to "finish my thread" and post a picture of the final product.