Larry N. said:
A lot depends on where it's mounted, too. Ideal would be the center of a metal roof, with hood or trunk being next, but I've seen many mounted right next to the vehicle body, which can cause all kinds of performance problems. A base load needs to have a lot of clear space around the base to get much performance, since so much of the signal is generated there. So they're all tradeoffs, but it looks like you have already decided the location. I presume that the 36" requirement has to do with clearance problems somewhere.
Luck...
Ya I know the chosen location is far less than ideal, but I'm not putting a hole in the roof and I don't want a temporary install (i.e., magnet mount with wire through door). So with that I'm kinda out of locations.
I was trying to keep the height at 3' simply due to the fact that my truck is tall enough as it is. Realistically though a taller antenna will just bend if I'm just going under a momentarily low spot, and I suppose if there was a parking garage or something similar I could just remove the mast. So I might do a 4 footer. Maybe a center load would be better?
That Firestik was whistling so bad on my last trip over the holidays (not towing) that I pulled over and moved it off the roof and stuck it on the fifth wheel hitch. On my previous truck I could hear the whistling unless I moved it to the extreme rear of the crew cab roof, then it was OK. But that truck had a camper lid so airflow was probably different over the roof.
The Firestik on my motorhome starts whistling at about 35MPH but once I get up to 55 or so there's just enough other wind noise that the whistling is largely masked.
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