Greetings TOM!   
      
    RW> TW>> I was an early CB'er also. They issued CB call signs in those   
    RW> TW>> days and mine was KNA 5683.   
      
    RW>> Californians were first issued 11W calls as I recall. Mine was   
    RW>> 18W4361...4 years later, I got KLK 1032 and when I moved to Seattle   
    RW>> in 1966, I got my favorite call; KPD 2428...I never bothered to   
    RW>> renew it because it was so easy to say and it stood out among all   
    RW>> those CA issued calls. There was a guy on Point Loma who still had   
    RW>> an 11W call when I moved out to CA...he and I ran Golden Eagles and   
    RW>> those radios really talked...   
      
    TW> I got mine in hte middle 60's here in California. I was stationed at   
    TW> the Mare Island Naval Shipyard at the time. I stil have a Squires -   
    TW> Sanders 23'er CB transceiver. After sitting for so long unused the   
    TW> channel change switch will not turn anymore.   
      
   I have several boxes of CB radios in the garage, some work, some don't. I   
   have 2 Cobra AM/SSB 23ch radios that work, but most of the radios are   
   junk...   
      
    RW> TW>> Also on building antennas I made my first CB antenna out of   
    RW> TW>> RG-58 coax. I removed 9 feet of the jacket on one end and folded   
    RW> TW>> the shield back over the lower half of the end of the coax and   
    RW> TW>> hung it up as a vertical antenna. Worked pretty good.   
      
    RW>> But it wasn't a 50ohm antenna. The 'ground plane' (your folded   
    RW>> shield) had to be at 45 deg from vertical to do that.   
      
    TW> O yes it was.   
      
   You can claim that it is all you want, but it isn't. To make it resonant,   
   it'll need a 50 ohm balun...   
      
    TW> That type of antenna is known as a "Sleeve" Antenna and it in effect   
    TW> was a 1/2 wavelength Vertical Dipole.   
      
   I know what it is. An engineer at Cubic made and tested those and he used   
   a balun to feed it.   
      
    RW> TW>>  For a while I also had a 1/4 wave fiberglass whip on the car   
    RW> TW>> but soon replaced it with a shorter loaded one as I had to be   
    RW> TW>> carefull driving under the canaopy of gas stations   
      
    RW>> You must have been driving a tank. I had 108" stainless whips on my   
    RW>> cars, though I didn't have any tanks in the stable. The neat part   
    RW>> about those is that you can keep the antenna folded over and held by   
    RW>> a plastic clip to the rain gutter and continue to talk. When you got   
    RW>> a tail-gater behind you, releasing the whip would slam it on his   
    RW>> hood and make him back off. 8^) I loved that part.   
      
    TW> I had it mounted on a 1963 Pontiac Tempest Convertable. It was a   
    TW> Fiberglass whip antenna so was not as easy to fold over as the   
    TW> stainless whips   
      
   I have a 10mtr 1/2 wave vertical in a glass tube. It will work on the   
   lower half of the band even as low as 27MHz, but it will need a set of   
   ground plane radials to make it resonant enough to cover more than that.   
      
   Manufacturer's recommendations.   
      
      
            R\%/itt - K5RXT   
      
    On Ward's exalted throne, he is still seated on nothing but his big arse.   
      
      
      
   --- GoldED+/W32 1.1.5-31012   
   --- D'Bridge 3.99   
    * Origin: HAM Radio, aka Amateur Radio. 804? Over! (1:387/22)