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wilson 1000

The Mad Scientist

The Mad Scientist

W9WDX Amateur Radio Club Member
Apr 24, 2012
761
108
38
Northeast Pa
hi all, been beating myself up lately trying to get my wilson 1000 to tune for 10 meter. wondering if anyone has scanned this antenna with a mfj259b for it's "mistery" resonant frequency? i tried everything that i could think of including wilsons calculations for stinger size...and the calculations for the coax in 1/2 wave incriments. whatever i do the swr is always a 2.0.1
 

Hmmm... normally cutting 3.5" off the whip, inserting it in the antenna and lifting it about 1/8" and locking it down will run damn near flat.

I've done that with a couple of old 1000 mag mounts with the 61.5" whip and had no problems.

From what I have heard, some of the shops are giving 66" whips with the 1000s now instead of the 61.5".
I'm not sure if most of their customers don't have enough ground plane or they talk below 1 or maybe if the coil design has changed.
 
i see, i have tried whip sizes from 57" to 59" and no matter where i set the whip i still get a 2.0.1 swr. i even tried different coax lengths with no effect.
 
Is there a place to buy the stingers in bulk? Or where is the most reasonable place to purchase them that you all have found?
 
i don't have anywhere to get them locally, i was ordering them online and they all seem to run around 15 or 16 bucks a piece just about every where, not really worh ordering them by themselves. going to give it one more go to try to get both the 1000 and 5000 to behave properly:bdh:, if not.....well...could always use them for wheel chocks;).
 
I never thought to ask, how did it perform on 27MHz.. or did you ever try?

Also, you don't mention if it's a mag, trunk lip or roof mount... either way they could all suffer from bad ground and using the lengths given in the guide would give a higher swr.
That's what I mentioned earlier, just forgot to elaborate on it. You would need a longer whip if you have a bad ground / small ground plane.

Every 1000 that I have used on CB was always dead on the money after fully inserting the whip and raising it roughly 1/8" and locking it down.
If it was me, I would try a new whip and check it on CB freqs just to see how it behaved and then make small cuts to get into 10M, checking progress along the way.
If you do have a grounding issue you might only need to cut 1"-2" instead of the normal 3".

Good Luck
 
I guess I been lucky with mine!

original whip matched 1.5:1 on the ends of cb band
ran it off and on, on 10 meters like that for 2 years and worked both 10 and 11 meters on that original length.

walked into radio shack this spring and bought a shorter one-haven't actually measured it- i need to get it measured and post back later, but I think it is about 57' what wilson recommends for 10 meters.

Well 10 meters has been off and on and I been running it on 11 as well and still working alot of dx.

Hope I get a chance to measure it and check the match soon for you all here.

Are you checking the swr with only a 4 watt max dead key and no modulation? If you have a power mike, turn power down low. It is possible that the old cb meters are only capable of 4 watts-but not sure.

What is the application? Semi tractor, car, pickup? What vehicle and where is the antenna located? If on the trunk of a vehicle, you may get a higher swr...My car did when i tried it there once even though my car is well bonded.

Well good luck, hope this and the forum can help you out.
 
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With antennas like these there are two directions you might have to go to tune them, longer or shorter. Find that out before cutting anything. Use some sort of extension to make the thing longer, wire, a piece of solder, whatever. If that makes the SWR readings worse then it means you have to go shorter. Going longer isn't the answer too may times, but it's a lot 'safer' than cutting when you don't have to, right?
Then it's a matter of cutting off small'ish 'bites' till you get to the ball-park, then even smaller bites to get 'closer' to what will work.
It's a very good idea to make sure there aren't other 'problems' before doing that cutting since cutting is non-reversible. Do that other problem kind of checking while you are doing that tuning too. If there isn't at least some change (good or bad) after taking a few small bites off that whip, then do some reevaluating, you know?
No two antennas of the same make/model are ever going to be -exactly- alike, there's always some small differences in how they are made. So, what works just dandy in one set of circumstances may be slightly 'off' in another. That's absolutely normal. Treat each installation as a 'brand new one'. See where things stand and then go from there.

Nothing 'new' in any of this and it's probably stuff you already know. But, it doesn't hurt to be reminded (or to remember it) every so often...
- 'Doc
 
You might try mounting the whip at its upper most and lower most positions in the antenna. Depending on the antenna you can usually get a half an inch or so difference in overall length. I haven't read anywhere in this thread on how many and which frequencies in the 10meter band. Is it that its flat across the 10 meter band at the 2.0 mark?

Assuming that is not the case I would check it at the lowest frequency your are allowed to use, then the highest, then the frequency right in the middle of those. From there we can better determine what is going on.

Another question, you stated that the SWR was tuned to 1.5 to 1 on the CB band. I'm curious if that was the best tune you could get with the antenna, if it was that way out of the box and you just left it alone, or if you or someone else tuned it in between the CB and 10 meter bands for a duel use? I ask because I have never had an issue tuning any Wilson antenna to have a better SWR across the CB band than that.


The DB
 
wilson antennas...gone insane

first i would like to thank everyone for their efforts in trying to help me out.

this is the setup, and how i went about doing the testing; both are mag mounts, i have no trouble setting the swr with the amplifier off, these problems are being seen with the amplifier on, and yes i know that the t.s. amps hare notorious for having swr issues due to having a " generic" tuned output. there is a twist at the end that i don't understand...bear with me.

current setup: i am running a rci6900f25 into a t.s.500v then into a yeasu ys-60 meter then to the antenna, the jumper from the radio to the amp is LMR240ultra at 6". the jumper from the amp to swr meter is LMR240 ultra at 6" and then the antenna coax rg8x at 17'6"..the setup is in a full sized vehicle with extensive bonding done to it..i.e hood to firewall, fenders to firewall, engine to chasis, doors to body, body to chasis. i used avaition grade 5/8" tinned ground braid with gold plated connectors that were opened to accept the full width of the ground braid. the amplifier and radio have five of these, one from radio at the so239 connection, and four from amplifier from the back of the heatsink terminating to a single point bolted right to the steel floorboard under the carpet. they are all under 9"long. before itwasall said and done i think i used almost 50' of the ground braid. and this was done years ago before the inital installation.

now,i ran a wilson 1000 with this setup for about seven years with no swr issues, and since april ran both 10 and 11 meters with the 1000 with no swr problems. i had two different whips cut for the center both bands and got fed up with climbing up there to change out the whips everytime i wanted to change bands.

now i tried setting up the wilson 5000 by itself.the whip length was 62" i tried to set it up for 11 meter and the lowest swr i could get by raising or lowering the whip was 1.6.1 with a abrupt jump on either side of the swr curve. so i tried a longer whip as i had a 66" whip here in case i ran into problems, and found the same problem. so i figured i would try to set it up for 10 meters using the 571/2" whip as suggested by wilson and found the same issue a 1.6.1 swr with an abrupt jump on either side of the curveat 28.500. rasing or lowering the whip had no effect at lowering the swr. and that 66" whip described previously was gradually trimmed down to acheave that 1.6.1 swr.

now for some reason when i tried setting the wilson 1000 back up to the way i had it prevoiusly i found i couldn't set it back up. then went through the before mentioned process to try to bring the swr down with no luck.

now this is where it gets interesting, i ordered one of those sirio turbo 5000 since i herd it was a failry decient antenna so i wanted to give it a try. when i got the antenna( of course i forgot to order the mag mount that goes with it) so i tested it on one of the wilson mags, now at first i seen the same problem except the lowest swr i could get on 11 meter was 2.0.1. and that was with adjusting the whip, so i decided to play around with adding jumpers to it and when i got to adding 54 1/2" to the existing 17' 6" of rg8x coax it gave me some 2 MHz of bandwidth with the amp on on 11 meter at a swrof 1.5.1 at either edge of the curve with 1.0.1 at the center.:eek:. so, when the mag came in i tested it with that lower grade rg58c/u coax that it came with at a length of 12'. and the bandwidth wasent that impressive probably .8 MHz with a swr of 1.4.1. so i figured i would change the coax out to the LMR240 ultra. i did the calculations 492/27.025=18.205x0.84=15.292, so i cut the length to 15' 3" soldered it to the mag and the connector and tried it and seen the same 2 MHz of bandwidth with the same swr curve. i used the 27.025 figure as i read that is the resonant frequency of the sirio antenna. so in the end what is the major difference between these three antennas? i understand that without an analizer i am in the dark and i am only assuming here but perhaps the wilsons are suffering from some form of reactance, and or capacitance issue? i am not sure...the best i can figure. a penny for your thoughts gentelman.
 
The DB said:
You might try mounting the whip at its upper most and lower most positions in the antenna. Depending on the antenna you can usually get a half an inch or so difference in overall length. I haven't read anywhere in this thread on how many and which frequencies in the 10meter band. Is it that its flat across the 10 meter band at the 2.0 mark?

Assuming that is not the case I would check it at the lowest frequency your are allowed to use, then the highest, then the frequency right in the middle of those. From there we can better determine what is going on.

Another question, you stated that the SWR was tuned to 1.5 to 1 on the CB band. I'm curious if that was the best tune you could get with the antenna, if it was that way out of the box and you just left it alone, or if you or someone else tuned it in between the CB and 10 meter bands for a duel use? I ask because I have never had an issue tuning any Wilson antenna to have a better SWR across the CB band than that.


The DB
Click to expand...

the 1.5.1 swr reading that i got (more like1.6.1) was just under the 10 meter band...27.865. with an abrupt jump as you went up. after a few frequencys going up it got to the 2.0.1 reading and stayed there as you went higher.

and yes, the 1.5.1 was the best it could do.

i don't think i mentioned this asthese tests were with the amplifier on. please check out my last post as i did a more thero testing yesterday.
 
Where it tunes fine with the radio is where the antenna should be. You are correct it is definitely the amp causing your issue.

Best solution is to take the amp to someone who can properly tune the output.

The quick and dirty solution is to buy an antenna tuner and get it as close as possible to the output of the amp (using a coupler if possible) and use that to tune the amp to the antenna system. Make sure the tuner in question can handle the power output of the amp. Also this will throw off the good tune when the amplifier is off.

Just curious, have you by chance checked your SWR's going into the amplifier when it is on?


The DB
 
yes i have. 1.2.1 on the input of the amplifier. that never really seemed to change. i know how to tune the amp, it is just difficult to do with with multible pairs of transistors, the way it was suggested to me anyway. i wonder if an output variable capacitor can be used like the ones that i have seen used in homebrew multi transistor amplifiers?
 
LOL i have a Wilson 5k that tunes across 10 meters perfect and not worth a hill of beans on 11!!! No matter what i do i cant get it to resonate on 11 meters. The best i can do is a 2.1 mismatch...
 

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