How much distance you need on a trail? On clear night I've picked up guys with boosted radios from 14 miles away. They obviosly could not hear me with my stock uniden 520. There is a simple hack to boost the 520 from 4 watts to 25 watts. Haven't done it yet. For trail use 3 foot is fine.

 

I run a 3' firestik on a homemade mount. I only have about 3 or 4 inches sticking above the top. My reception is just fine. I did find that mounting on the gate required running a ground wire to the mount. I don't know if the mount you have takes care of that or not.

 

The Gatemount came with a grounding wire, so I ran it through the tailgate grommet. I never hooked it up to anything though (I don't have the subwoofer bolt to put it on) and everything is working fine.

 

of the gate mount/? and fire stick/quick disconnect and where to order?

 

I Have the gate mount my spare hit it also but now I have a rear bumper with a carrier so no spare on the gate

 

I don't understand why it was designed so that it hits the spare tire. I tried contacting Cooltech via e-mail and PM but haven't gotten any replies in a month.

It seems like a decent product, but for $90 I expected that it would clear the tire so the antenna stands up straight...