Hey ghutch, I think you answered my question already.
Back in the day, when you had your whip on your P/U truck's rear bumper, did you think your setup was no-way-no...as compared to your local buddies that had their installations done correctly, a distinction you seem to be making here?
When I use to run mobile with my 102" whip on my rear bumper, I never had a bad match like you suggest may be the case. In the beginning of my radio experiences, in the late 60's, I didn't know sickem' from comear', but I would have surely known had my match looked bad. How bad of a match do you think we had back then...runing our mobiles like we did?
I know of guys today that can't talk 5 miles with their mobile setups and others that seem to work just fine at 30-40 miles using side band. I use to talk all over the greater Houston area, maybe 30 miles. For the most part I thought everybody did just about as well back then...talking all over the Houston area. Back then we had a lot of traffic on every channel, just about 24/7, and that was a problem too at times.
If you thought about the ground plane on your typical mobile and without your bonding work, do you think a mobile setup presents a larger or smaller ground plane effect than a 102" radiator with 4 x 102" inch radials slanted down like a Starduster?
