Ay, four-roger-D, good buddy, on the directional impact of antenna 
locations.  You get out best in the direction with the most metal; thus a 
front-mounted antenna gives you better range to the rear.  Why?  It's 
*magic*, don't ask me.  Back when I was 10-8 in Gainesville, Fla. as the 
Brass Monkey (KBG-4270), I had a little Sharp 23-channel with a trunk-lid 
mounted antenna on my MGB, and at night I could peg S-meters at 3-4 
miles.  Folks always accused me of having a linear, but it was jest mah 
piercin' twaing ("Ay, fo'! Ay, fo'! We be -55 fo' sho'!  Tee-in fo'?  
Cawt-cha layta...we go.")

If you can still find them, power mikes are a good way to go.  They don't 
boost xmit power, just assure 100% modulation -- filling up the pipeline, 
as it were.  And they're legal -- or were last time I checked, which was 
about '76 at Laffin-idjit Radio (sigh).

My dear departed '68 westy came with a 1/8 wave whip mounted on the 
roof.  I put the Sharp on the dash top, mounted with screws through the 
existing radio-speaker holes.

>From what I recall, full 1/4-wave bumper-mount whips are best (CB is I 
think 27MHz, with a 10-meter wavelength, so a 1/4-wave whip is about 8.5 
feet long).  It's best to have your antenna some exact multiple 
(divisiple?) of 10 meters.  If you can get hold of an SWR meter, you can 
fine-tune the antenna length and also measure relative signal strength in 
various directions.  Antenna matchers -- little boxes with knobs, they go 
inline between radio and antenna -- can "electronicaly" trim your antenna 
lenght and compensate for cable length.

Good grief!  I was as obsessive about CBs as I am about netsurfing today!

3's and 8's to ya,
Joe

Joe Clark       Floridiana.Fiction.VWs.Kidstuff.CBT.Whimsy-by-the-truckload.
 jclark@nexus.polaris.net       http://www.polaris.net:80/user-www/jclark/

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