06-16-2009, 05:35 AM
Like NW said, through the door is fine as long as its not pinched, you don't want to damage the outer braid of the coax or crack the inner insulator around the inner wire and have the braid and wire contacting each other. Coax will stand up to a bit of abuse and running through the door is childs play to it. I've currently got a magnet mount (had to take off the good antenna) and its run through the front of the door and across the roof.
When you go to the big rig shop, ask them about tuning the antenna. Tuning is just adjusting the length to get the SWR ratio as low as possible. Ideally you want a 1:1 but outside of a lab thats unlikely. I've gotten 1.2:1 already but the norm is about 1.5 to 1.7 to 1. SWR is basically a measurement of how much of your radios transmitted signal is radiated out from the antenna as compared to how much is reflected back to the radio through the coax from the antenna. If there's too much reflected signal you'll end up burning out your radio, anything from just killing the transmit circuits (instant conversion from 2-Way CB to CB Scanner)to the power supply itself.
When you go to the big rig shop, ask them about tuning the antenna. Tuning is just adjusting the length to get the SWR ratio as low as possible. Ideally you want a 1:1 but outside of a lab thats unlikely. I've gotten 1.2:1 already but the norm is about 1.5 to 1.7 to 1. SWR is basically a measurement of how much of your radios transmitted signal is radiated out from the antenna as compared to how much is reflected back to the radio through the coax from the antenna. If there's too much reflected signal you'll end up burning out your radio, anything from just killing the transmit circuits (instant conversion from 2-Way CB to CB Scanner)to the power supply itself.