Ground plane advice

[nikharr]

Hi all,

just after some advice on ground planes, I have struggled for a while on My Renault espace.

First attempt was to run some earthing strapes to the floor pan, managed to get a good swr, but didnt remain stable.
Second attempt was to earth to the door pillars either side with about 9 ft of wire wound into a coil and hidden in the pillars.
Same result, no stability.

I have decided to fabricate a frame out of 25mm stainless box (1.5mm wall thickness) with a 1.5mm stainless sheet about 1400 x 700mm welded to it. I would then mount this onto the standard roof bars.

My question is, would this be enough area to provide a sufficent ground plane.

My previous attempts were for CB, I have now passed my Foundation and want to install somthing like a FT857 with a Watson Multi-Ranger 9, or simular.

Has anyone had any experiance with doing somthing simular before and how well did it work.

Thanks Nik.
M6TRC

[nikharr]

Anyone with ideas, opinions or experiance?

[Conor]

You're going to suffer as you drop down the bands. The lower the frequency, the harder it'll be.

Rather than get the Multi Ranger, buy monoband whips. 20m is a good band to start off with as you can get quite far and it'll be easier to get a match with your idea than 40m would.