Long Haired Country Boy

Hey y’all, I’m new here so take it easy on me lol I’ve been a ham radio operator since the late 90s, but am new to the Jeep world.

What type of mount do y’all use for ham antennas? Obviously my mag mount won’t work on my freedom top and in the middle of the hood wouldn’t be an ideal location, so throw me some ideas. (I did look a few pages into the thread)

bbolander

My favorite is on the front fender under the hood to an exisitng fender bolt. It's a CB antenna mount that had to be drilled out for the ham antenna. I couldn't drill the stainless steel but a 4wd shop did it for me.

Dat

Fender mount like posted above is probably best, that’s the way i did my CB, now that i am getting into ham, im gonna have to do some rethinking on if i want to add a radio, or swap out, antenna location is limited on a jeep

Montego

I'm working on an antenna mount that will put the antenna just over the JK taillight.

Even though the tire carrier mount is popular, I need to keep the ability to close the tailgate with the rear hard top window open.
Many have argued that mounting behind the rear tire (steel belts) is one of the worst, least-optimal locations for an antenna.

There are some great posts on how & where to mount your antenna. Starting with center of metal roof (not really possible for JKs), more or less in order getting worse; other good places include, edge of hood, side middle ball mount, License plate (cooltech), A-Pillar, or bumper mount.
On my old TJ, I put the antennas (CB & ham) on those right-angle "mirror mounts" just over each tail light. Worked out really well. Something I especially liked was that the antennas were NOT always getting scraped on narrow trails by bushes, trees & canyon walls. Those can be rough on an antenna. So for that reason, I really want to mount back there again. But JKs don't have those same mounting spots. The hard top rear window is wider that the tailgate opening so you can't mount to that nice space to the left of the tailgate handle either. Well, not if you want the glass to open.

Anyway, I'm working on making a mount that will go around & over the JK taillight. Apparently nobody's done that before?

bbolander

I also have an ARB rear bumper and tire carrier with a mounting point above the rear tail light. I have antenna mounts there also but I still like the antenna on the front fender better. Before the ARB tire carrier I used Arizona Rocky Roads mounts in order to get the antennas above the spare tire.



This is the antenna mount on the ARB tire carrier. I only use one antenna at a time here. CB and Ham.

Before the ARB tire carrier, I used the Arizona Rocky Roads rear tire carrier mounts.

Creepy Neville

I went with a front fender also to make use of the hood as a ground-plane - albeit a little closer to the front window. Because of the location, I could make use of a straight SS NMO bracket - I ground the fender down to bare metal under the mount to ensure a good ground, then used pop rivets to ensure a really positive mount.

I made use of that handy-dandy square hole to rout my cable into the fender and then straight through the firewall. You can see this square hole in bbolander's first photo also.



The standard duel band antenna (I assume that is what you are mounting?) is about 35" long, but I found this shorty (Larson NMO2/70SH) which is about 19" long seems to work just as well - and it has a spring mount to boot ! This shorter antenna makes is less likely to get caught on the trail, and even if it does get snagged - the spring provides enough flexibility to save the unit in most cases.



My two cents ....

Mark Doiron

I have CB, GMRS and ham radios in both of my rigs. And I've opted for an NMO mount on both. I swap the cable to the RT unit I need for that trip, and swap the antenna at the NMO mount. The Wrangler mount is up on my overhead rack. The Gladiator mount is on the driver's side fender ...


Wrangler.

Wrangler.

Gladiator.

Gladiator.

comgear

I recently bought a very heavy duty NMO hood mount that uses a top fender bolt for my ham antenna. They also sent a large self tapping screw if you decided you need extra stability. Mine came from topsyproducts.com. 5 minute install. Hope this helps

mike paner

the tire carrier mount is popular, I need to keep the ability to close the tailgate with the rear hard top window open.
Many have argued that mounting behind the rear tire (steel belts) is one of the worst, least-optimal locations for an antenna.

Dat

I tried the spare tire mount to start with when I had the cb in the jeep, never could get the swr below 2.5 or so, when I mounted it on the fender I could get down to 1:1
mounted the vhf/ uhf antenna on the same fender and never looked back, flexable enough for going through the woods and not worrying about limbs