Veep Finds 20 Meter Rhombic Antenna That Fell Off Truck

[Jeff K1NSS]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/biden-scores-800-feet-of-copper-wire,31013/

[kb2vxa]

Just think of what he could get from transformers at a power station.

[KG4CGC]

Just think of what he could get from transformers at a power station.

Herpes?

[W3WN]

Just think of what he could get from transformers at a power station.Please, no. The last Transformers movie was bad enough.

[NQ6U]

Just goes to show that even the geniuses at the Onion have a bad day once in a while.

[kb2vxa]

Herpes? Transformers movie? Oh no, I can just picture Transformers and Power Station, Optimus Prime and friends dancing around on stage playing Some Like It Hot. Oh no, that's even worse than Marlyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in an all girl band.

"Just goes to show that even the geniuses at the Onion have a bad day once in a while."
Just goes to show that the evil geniuses at the Onion have a bad day once in a while. There, fixed it.

[WX7P]

Just goes to show that even the geniuses at the Onion have a bad day once in a while.

This.

[Jeff K1NSS]

Talk on the repeater that if Hillary don't step aside, Curly Joe's finally gettin' his Tech after all those years with that souped-up CITI-FONE in the Firebird.

[kb2vxa]

Ironically my first CB rig was a Citi Fone CD5A which BTW was made by a lesser known Amateur Radio manufacturer, Multi Elmac.

[Jeff K1NSS]

Heh-heh, that reference was not random. I remembered the brand from the very Pre-Rubber Ducky CB days and was delighted to discover the Multi-Elmac association when I looked it up. My kid radio gang was a mix of both camps, and some were both.

We argued and ridiculed brands a lot. I recall "Sick Swan" being tossed around for bad audio. "Louseyette Radio" too. Knight Kits got no respect. We thought Clegg VHF stuff was cool, and the Drake T-line.

in the kid radio gang subsets, the Techs were kind of savvy CBers, big into mobile and local intrigue. Stick in the shack Generals like me were more CW, more Dx & contest Hfers. What a crew!

[kb2vxa]

I remember the Swan 1011B being the same as the Sicktronix (Siltronics) 1011B as being very popular on 11M CB as well as the Yeasu FT-101 series. Speaking of which I knew a guy who had one with the FL-2100 amp who sounded FB on AM and SSB because he knew how to use them "properly". I never heard of Louseyette, we called it Laughingyet and they were American radios re-branded until no longer made and they quickly went Yapanese. Of course Knight Kits got no respect, neither did Heapshits. BTW the Gonset VHF Communicators were Clegg gone modular, I had the 2M series 1-4.

"...the Techs were kind of savvy CBers, big into mobile and local intrigue."
Around here the Techs and higher class ne CBers were disappointed to discover a license took all the intrigue out of radio they were into back in their CB daze. Mobiling, we had some hysterical fox hunts, we were the fox they were chasing with blood in their eyes. Local intrigue had them hopping mad, they couldn't figure out who or where the mystery stations were as they were all prerecorded chop busting sessions from multiple locations all sounding the same. What a crew is right when CB stood for chop busting, now cue Melanie, Those Were The Days.

BTW, in the CB pre rubber duckie days there were of course the 100mW walkie talkies but for the serious minded there were 5W bricks with anywhere from 3 to 23 channels with long telescoping whips and an accessory item they could be replaced with, a telescopic 1/4 wave loaded whip. Speaking of whips, I knew a guy with a 102" whip and a weak spring on the rear bumper. He figured out how to do a quick swerve that made it lay flat and surprised a YL or two smacking them in the derriere. Mobile intrigue at its finest!

[Jeff K1NSS]

All that's great stuff...and the whip with the weak spring, ooo, apocryphal or gods honest, who cares... I'd like to steal that for the last book if I ever get to it. One chapter is a "rumble" of sorts between dittybop CBers, piled into one dropout's rusty Plymouth complete with Citi-Fone and dashboard spring Reverb unit, vs us weenie collegiate hams on our 3 speed English Racers in a Lafayette Radio parking lot out on the ol' Truck Route amongst the chop shops and day old bakery outlets. In truth we generally got along fine, hanging at each other's shacks, and the local ham shop, plus some parts jobbers around the area. Remember one CBer I knew had a pretty slick electrically rotatable pattern vertical array (5/8 wave?) which seemed like the berries, and a Tech with a 16 element colinear with which he used to work Graylock with ease from Utica NY on 2 meters. Everybody was into into records and reel tapes and audio, building speaker cabinets and whatnot, the great lingua franca, with some of us moving on to guitar and bands. Give me a few more years and I'll convince myself those indeed were the days, but right now I still remember too much, thank goodness.

[kb2vxa]

You don't have to steal anything, wind your own yarn around the booty buster antenna at your pleasure. Since you're going with the CitiFone here's a CD5A with a Turner 350 mic for mobile so you can see what to draw. Mine however was modified with tunable receive and panel mounted crystal socket in position 5 on the channel selector.

Once upon a time I had a '59 Impala, the one with horizontal fins and cat eye tail lights with a Hallicrafters CB3A under the dash and a 102" whip and spring on a ball mount to the left and behind the rear window on the wide shelf between the window and trunk lid. I started out with a Turner 350 but when I came across a PTT handset from an Army field phone an idea hit, I replaced the carbon mic element with the crystal one from the Turner and wired the earpiece across the speaker, that's when the original 5 pin mic plug and jack came in handy. People thought I had a radiotelephone, now how cool is that? Your spring reverb isn't far off although using it for a primitive echo mic would be a wiring nightmare with an undesirable effect, hit a bump and it sounds to the beginning of Wipeout just before the falsetto laugh. I found that out when I got one out of a Cadillac at the scrap yard and wired it to the front-rear speaker fader in the car radio and put a speaker in the rear grill after removing the blank cover.

Oh yeah, that electrically rotatable mobile 1/4 wave base loaded array was made by Antenna Specialists and I knew a guy who had one in his convertable, don't remember the make. He also had a 100W amp in the glove box. Your guy was Mike Dawson aka Captain Video maybe? Directionality was obtained by a phasor box containing switchable coaxial delay lines giving omni, front, rear and figure 8 off the sides when the antennas were mounted front and rear 9' apart, his wheeled aircraft carrier accomplished that diagonally. Shades of Mount Penn in Reading, Pennsylvania early one morning busting chops of mobiles going to work in Camden, New Jersey 80 miles away. Regardless of the fact we made clear they insisted we were in Camden as one said it's that antenna here while the next guy said no, it's this antenna HERE clear across town. Meanwhile The Crusher sitting on the mountain was laughing hysterically.

Oh heck yeah, I remember the Mt. Graylock repeater that covered half of the Northeast but blocked by the Watchung Mountains I couldn't hear it. Obviously I missed out on something big.

Heh, vinyl records, reel 2 reel tape, tube equipment with massive outputs that made the 6L6 look weak and home made speaker cabinets with plans and formulas from Speakerlab with components by Electrovoice and Altec-Lansing. Careful with that axe, Eugene, the right note will shatter the windows. I built a prototype 3 way with a 12" woofer but never built another so I used it with a 120W solid state juke box amp and played my Japanese guitar I got at a thrift shop (poorly) and not being careful with the axe shattered a window playing the guitar solo from which Pink Floyd song I don't remember but it had some wicked screams in it.

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I remember too much
Or maybe not enough
But that was just a dream, try, cry, why, try
That was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream