NGP (No Ground Plane)
No Ground Plane (NGP) Antennas:
If you try to use standard ground-based CB equipment with a vehicle or in a situation that requires a "no ground plane" antenna, you'll likely experience both high SWR levels and extremely poor performance. Wondering what a ground plane is? Check out our article in our Help Center!
Vehicles that require NGP equipment:
- Have a fiberglass shell or coating over much or all of the vehicle
- Have little or no metallic chassis for the antenna to be grounded to
Vehicles that should use NGP products:
- Motor homes and large fiberglass coaches
- Camper shells where the antenna is mounted directly to the fiberglass (instead of the vehicle)
- Boats
- Motorcycles with little or no ground plane
Additional note:
If you are putting together your own kit, make sure that you not only select a no ground antenna, but also the proper coax, such as the K8NGP. NGP Coax is essential. For more information regarding this, see our article on selecting the proper coax.
Use NGP cable for NGP antennas. Using no ground plane antenna cable for a traditional antenna (and vice versa) will give you high SWR problems. If you already have a NGP coax and need to extend it (possibly needing a KPL258X connector), you can do so by using RG8X coax but keep in mind that you will have some loss. Kalibur coax has 95% shield and is the coax we would recommend. Most of the NGP kits have specialized RG58 coax. If you cannot extend the coax for your NGP system or can't make an NGP setup work for you, you could install a metal plate to create a ground plane and use a standard antenna.
