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Yes, there is always going to be a difference. You bond because coax connectors are NOT high current rated. The circular mills of the shield conductor is also not sufficient to minimize the resistance of the conductor. This is why you don't use split bolts and crap to do your grounding. It's all CadWeld or 15 ton compression lugs / connections.

Lighting is just like tornadoes. Destroying one while barely touching the one next door. Could have been grounding, or just dumb luck. People struck by lighting can survive or become crispy kritter piles of dust.

That right there should protect the radio. But I know nothing will protect with a direct hit. Dissipating charge should be accomplished with the wire sizes as they are. I'm just thinking about my situation. The main electrical connection to all 4 bays in the building I'm in is at the opposite side of where my antenna is. That's 170' of conductor needed to make the connection from where the cable enters the building to the bond where the electrical box is. 25'+100'+45'. And as to having a ground rod for each leg of the tower why can't the 3 or 4 legs be connected by copper wire and then go to a single ground rod? The ground loop around the tower is doing essentially just that but just increasing the cost substantially. And would that change between a steel tower and an aluminum tower since aluminum conducts better?

Another, and a bit more in depth explanation / fact with lightning grounding and bonding. And the reason you ground EVERYTHING. Wires are NOT a perfect conductor. No matter the wire size or length, copper wire does have a resistance. Meaning that a voltage applied at one end of the wire will NOT be the same as the voltage at the other end of it depending on the voltage and current in the wire. More over, and this was mentioned before. The ground, no matter the number of rods, plates, screens or whatever you bond together in your grounding field. That connection to the ground is NOT perfect either. So, when a strike happens, a direct strike. The voltage (potential) of the equipment with reference to earth ground (0 volts) rises with the strike and then falls. Now this can be thousands or possibly tens of thousands of volts. So, that being said. If you DON'T bond everything together and the tower takes a strike. The radio is connected to the tower. The power supply is connected to your safety ground for the utility feed. Between them is a potential voltage of thousands to tens of thousands of volts. The radio and the power supply are sitting next to each other and the radio case voltage is 50KV, and the power supply case potential is 0 volts. Guess what happens. Bang. Flash. Smoke. If everything is bonded, it all goes to 50KV or whatever voltage, and then back to zero. And you are protected from that spike. Because it all went up and down. It's the difference in potential that causes issues. And a crappy ground field and good bonding practices are far SAFER than a great grounding system and half the gear not being connected to it, and in truth, its worse than nothing at all because it really creates the possibility of the difference in potential in the radio room. Now, no one has discussed the reason we ground to begin with. And the primary function is NOT to handle a strike. That's a secondary function. The primary function of a grounding system is to keep everything connected to it at ground potential and at 0 volts with reference to ground. The CB guys will tell you about their coaxes popping while they are in a glass jar and disconnected from the radio. This is the MOST DANGEROUS situation of all. Reason being is that antenna is going far above ground potential by thousands of volts until the air breaks down as an insulator and it arc's off. Lightning will always take the path of least resistance. To understand that, you need to understand the whole 'potential' thing. The short version is that lightning will strike the place that has the highest charge on it. If your antenna has several thousand volts on it and the tree next to it don't and the ground don't then boom, the antenna gets the hit. The higher in the air something is and the higher the potential that thing has, is gonna be the point that the strike happens. So then we introduce grounding and bonding to the mix. When you ground the tower, feed line, antenna, obstruction light, and all the rest of it. All of it's at the same potential as the ground that it's sitting on / in. All that static build up, which is what causes the coax to arc off in the storm, is run to ground and that keeps the potential low. For the radiating elements on a non-grounded antenna like a long wire or a dipole for HF work, a surge suppressor is used. And they have multiple things internally that help keep the potential low. First is a resistor that has enough resistance to NOT effect the SWR or impedance of the antenna system. Now the second part is a gas discharge tube. These tubes are rated to 'fire' or short when a voltage above a certain point is reached. This is where the power or wattage rating comes from on these. Because we know the resistance / impedance of the circuit (50 ohms) the voltage across that 50 ohm load will result in some power level. So the firing voltage is some percentage above that voltage. It's why hams running mismatched antenna's will fire their surge suppressors when running reasonably low power levels but the antenna instead of being 50 ohms is 700 ohms or something like that and they are using an antenna tuner to lie to the radio and show it a 50 ohm impedance. The impedance doesn't change in the antenna and cable past the tuner, it's still high. THe tuner is what matches it. BUT, 100 watts is 100 watts. IF that's what you are putting into the antenna when it's operated in it's bandwidth and presents a 50 ohm impedance then the voltage is X. But if the antenna is 700 ohms and the power is still 100 watt's the voltage is NOT X any more, it's far higher. And that surge suppressor will fire at that point. But back to the point of keeping everything, but mostly the tower, at ground potential is this. If the top of the tower is the same potential as the ground around the tower, then the lightning will go find a tree somewhere to hit. Or it will hit the ground because the top of the tower doesn't look any better to lightning than the ground around it. Don't bleed off that static charge and that tower will take hits. And a tower that's been hit a couple times will get to the point it looks REALLY good. Reason is that the ground rods will encase themselves in glass or whatever dirt is around them as the get hit. The more often they get hit, the more buildup happens. In sandy soil, they will encase themselves in glass. And at that point you have no more ground. The whole system will need to be dug up and replaced. I have seen this.

Disconnect/open loops because EMF. Lightning strike between my house and neighbor's house took out 2 window AC's and 3 TV's at the neighbor's house, but just a light ballast and the power filter board on my HF rig. If I had had the HF rig disconnected from the power supply it would have just been the light ballast. Power poles are your friend.

So I just got the Anytone 5888UV Dual Band in today and ran into the issue with Chirp showing "list index out of range" error beginning at channel 35 when I pulled the original programming from the radio. It wouldn't let me program to the radio from channel 35 onward. I found a solution to this issue and wanted to share it. In order to get the full frequency list to index properly in Chirp, you first need to download and install the AnyTone 5888UV factory software. Once the software is installed, open it and download the stock programing from the radio. After the download is complete, upload that exact list back to the radio using the factory software. Go back into Chirp and download from the radio again. Now all of the available channels for the radio can be accessed and the "list index out of range" error is gone. I discovered this by messing around with both softwares because I really wanted to use Chirp to dump my programming list into the radio. You will need to use the factory software to set advanced settings however for the radio configuration options. I spend atleast an hour online searching for this workaround but wasn't able to find it. Hopefully this post will help others down the road with this issue.

Because the ground line of the power supply is isolated from the plus and minus 13.8 vDC lines that provide power to your radio or DC power distribution box.

Of you do not have an adequate metallic surface then it is imperative that you use a non-groundplane antenna. They will perform very well if you go with a Laird or Larsen.

All three antennae shown are removable. The front two are on NMO mounts.

So why isn't the tower bonded to the electrical ground through the coax which is attached to the chassy which is grounded through the ground line in the power outlet? No matter how much you ground anything because of the resistance of wire they'll always be at a different potential?

An antenna not designed for the frequency you're transmitting on could reflect power back into your radio instead of radiating it out as radio waves. If the reflected power is too high (high SWR), the radio will either scale back its power to avoid harm, or become damaged. A CB antenna is made for 26MHz, and a GMRS antenna is made for 465MHz. The difference is great enough the reflected energy will probably be quite high.

I continue to have the same problem with accessing the forum. The forum won't permit a photo of the screen shot displaying the error message.

Obviously, we'll do some testing with my antenna before she spends the money for one. There's no doubt about that, but we have to work with what we have. Modern vehicles have so many non-metallic parts that it's often hard to find a decent ground plane. Literally the only ground plane on my truck is the roof. The hood is fiberglass. I'm going to install an NMO on the roof at some point; I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I use to run a CB antenna on a metal toolbox that was mounted to a homemade wooden flatbed. The tool box was definitely not big enough for a proper ground plane for CB/11m but it still worked. A few guys run a Yaesu ATAS antenna or other types of screw driver antennas on the bed rails of their trucks and Gladiators without issue. HF definitely needs a bigger ground plane than VHF or UHF.

Couple quick pics. Ignore the body damage.. it my offroader.

That's great if it works for him. All antennas, even the no ground plane antennas, will benefit from a ground plane. That being said. Plenty of ground plane antennas still work with a less than optimal ground plane underneath.

I used the Diamond SG7900 on my truck where the ground plane is practically nonexistent and it works fine. I bought it because DX Engineering said it didn't need a ground plane, and then found out it is actually a ground plane antenna, but I'm not going to argue with success. It's one of the options I'll suggest to my friend.

Thanks! I feared that might be the case.

Those are all useful options. I'll show them to the owner.

One of the reasons I always go with an NMO mount is so I can remove the antenna for car washes. Full disclosure: It's not my vehicle; I'm helping a friend figure out what to do.

Definitely don't overcomplicate things. Either use the existing fuses where they are at or move them closer to the battery. I have yet to burn up any wires or blow fuses even when talking for a long time with any of my 50 watt dual band and GMRS radios. And I run them on high power all of the time.

I wouldn't put 2 fuses, but i would relocate the one that came with it to no more than 18 inches from the battery. The closer, the better.

Jeezus... Stop trying to over-complicate everything and use the damn fuses that came with it.

I am installing the new Btech GMRS 50PRO in my truck. A general rule of thumb is to install fuses about 6 inches from the connection to the battery. However, the fuses on the radio I got come hardwired six inches from the radio and not on the extended cable it comes with. My question, is do I add extra fuses in line next to the battery on top of the fuses that come with the unit, or do I just use the fuses that come with the unit itself, despite them being so far away from the car battery?

Here's three options for the Jeep. The lip mount on the hood is a Laird Lip-Mount and Phantom antenna, and does not need anything special. This Phantom antenna is used for UHF DMR. The mount on the driver's side near the A pillar is a Laird non- ground plane for VHF and the mount is a Rugged Radios mount. The glass-mount on the rear glass is a Larsen and used for UHF. I get great performance with the glass-mount antenna. All of these options can apply to the Gladiator. The Midland antennae are great if you are just transmitting on GMRS freqs. If you are transmitting on a mix of GMRS and Business Radio Service freqs use the Lairds and Larsen antennae, do use any of the HAM crap stuff.