Antron 99 top section

[dxing440]

thx for the input.
I cut a piece of 10 guage wire about 78" and inserted it with a 3/8x24 bolt and hung it from a tree. The SWR with radio at 2w swingin 45w, is 1.5 at 26.965 and 1.2 at 27.555 and then back to 1.6 at 28.500. But still gonna find an antenna so it can be mounted instead of hung

 

[Onelasttime]

The top element on the A-99 of yester year was a metallic rod wrapped in fiber glass. You could hear the rod inside rattling around. i lived in Hinsesville Ga. for a while and it was was prone to a lot of lighting strikes and sever winds. It was pretty common for guys to replace the top element with a 102 inch whip trimmed to fit. If the SWR is already set they would just trim the whip until they had the same SWR. Most would round the tip to help with static. obviously an exposed SS whip is an electrical hazard and violates FCC rules on CB base antenna's. I knew one guy that replaced his top element with an untrimed 102 inch whip. In his case the SWR was fine but we never put the MFJ analyzer on it to see how it was performing and never whipped out a dip meter to see what the radiation pattern was. I think his handle was HillBilly? That was back in 1991 or 1992.

The problem as I see it with just sticking any element on top is that you need to stay bellow .64 wave length or the radiation pattern will collapse on itself in a hurry. On top of that who knows what the matching network can handle before your radio and or amp are no longer seeing a 50ohm load. So long as the matching network on the antenna could handle it getting closer to the magical mythical .64 wave length in theory sounds great.

What did they call the A-99 1/2 over a 1/4 or something like that?