Military Antenna Mount for Civilian Trucks

Hello everyone, this is my idea for mounting the various Military Antennas that use the MS-116, MS-117,MS-118 antenna sections and mounts such as the AB-15. Most of these antenna mounts use bases that are set up to go on the flat sided military trucks and are not very useful if you want to put a military whip on a civilian truck! I do alot of portable and field day type activies and this gives me a way to use the military antennas on my truck. I designed this antenna mount to go between the box and the cab and be bolted to the front of the trucks box. I purposefully didn't include any dimensions as every application will be different. In my case I own an 1971 F100 Ford Truck. I built the mount with 1/4 inch plate as the base so I could tap the bolt holes, as the spacing between the cab and the box is too small to get your hand into put the nuts on the bolts. I used 3/16 inch plate to make up the top part of the mount. The photos tell the story much better than I can describe it. This idea can be used to make a mount that will hold any of the military antennas on any of the civilian trucks.

These two photos show the mount finished ready for paint. The top photo shows that ground strap that goes to the frame of the truck. The second photo gives you a better view of how the mount is built. I used 1/4 inch bolts with fender washers to attach the mount to the front of the box.

The next three photos show how the antenna mount is installed on my truck. You might have noticed that the AB-15 mount has been reworked! This is because the spring was broke inside the rubber casing, I cut out the spring and welded the two pieces together. I don't plan on having the whip erected while I mobile, so figured that a solid mount would be fine in my case.

Some thoughts after I have built this mount! Depending on which antenna system that you wanted to use, I think that I would build the whole mount out of 1/4 plate. There is some flex in my mount. This isn't a problem in my case, but it could be if you wanted to use this idea while you are in motion.