New Super Penetrator 500

[old_school_CB]

well i have been looking for info on these antenna's, i'm satisfied with the sirio GPE 5/8 i bought to get started with radio again, but miss the old super penetrator that i had 25 years ago. I got it for free by installing an antron 99 for the guy that owned it. The matching network was broken and i found an old manual on making a 5/8 wave antenna with a 6 foot round matching ring at the bottom, made the ring out of 6' of 1/4 in copper tube positioned under the ground plane radials. Ran wire from the original lug to the ring, moved it around to get the best match and clamped in spot, worked great, had the antenna on a 40' tower guessing the tip of the antenna at about 67'.i lived in the detroit area which is extremely flat and had a job doing road service work with a radio in my service truck.Base radio was an old 23 channel pearce simpson tube radio AM...not high wattage but a good radio. point is i could hear my base from 40 miles away and almost none of the big radios that were in the same area.I am going to try and build mine from scratch this time, i wont be able to get the same height because i live with an airport in my back yard, about the best i can do is around 40 feet at the tip, but my town is at 4000 ft above sea lvl and skip is easy from here, plus i have a lot better radio, i will be enjoying retirement soon and will try and post as the project goes along. all the manuals posted here is an immense help.one question before i start, i intend on building it from copper instead of aluminum, will this make any difference? it seems a shame that copper is more affordable than aluminum and with the new spt 500 at 260 dollars now, i can build one for about half of that. will also be building my own antenna tower but that will have my beams on it .radio just seemed to be a good hobby to get back into.thanks for the massive amount of antenna info you guys post, keeps my mind working.