Review
of RoadPro (TruckSpec TSVMT-530) CB antenna
Revision 1.0
The RoadPro TruckSpec TSVMT-530 Citizen Band antenna
comes as 3" magnetic mount and a bottom loaded coil and a top
section 2-foot whip. Pre-wired with 12 feet of coax terminated
with a UHF connector. It's rated for 25 Watts. This page reports my observations.
As it comes in the package, it comes in three pieces that you hand assemble before use.
- The base is pretty large and stable. It has a nice rubber
pad to protect the car finish, but it's thin enough to not degrade the
magnetic hold down power.
- The whip is held into a little threaded adapter with a hex set screw. It has an open-air coil part way up the whip.
- There is a coil section that screws into the magnetic base with
about a 3/8" thread. The coil section includes an internal xx uHenry
wound inductor that connects to an approxmiately 1/8" brass threaded
section that the whip screws onto. On the outside of the coil
section, there are two metal rings that thread up or down to interrupt
the magnetic field of the wound coil, and change the tuning of the
antenna.
Problem - the brass threads that stick out the top of the coil section
are glued onto a very small 1/8" plastic tip that sticks out from the
wound coil. Very easy to break off if the whip is stressed
sideways in any way. Basiclly the whip will crack the brass tip
off the plastic core. Even worse, using no tools (just hand
snugging the threads), the adapter at the base of the whip presses
against the outer plastic shroud around the wound coil, and the threads
were powerful enough to pull / snap the thin 1/8" plastic so the brass
threaded adapter came totally free, mechanically breaking loose from
the coil, and breaking the electrical connection from the coil to the
whip.
Overall outcome of the coil design? Hand-tighten the whip onto
the coil and the attachments threads pull apart and break the interior
of the coil section! Antenna dead. The entire antenna stack
is dependent on a thin 1/8" diameter section of glued plastic.
This is not a very good design for mobile use and robust survival in
the elements.