Just an update for anyone following this thread. I tried the pvc lower half
with good results. I just did a very loose spiral of copper wire around the
pvc. I was wrong on a couple of things, though. The antenna in the picture
has 12" of copper pipe at the bottom, not 18". The pvc section was 18".
Anyway, there was no difference in performance but it's still not flexible
enough for the trunk mount. The other thing I did was compare it to a
trunk-mounted 3 ft. antenna by antenna specialists. The 2 signal reports I
got showed that my antenna won. The numbers I got from 2 people in different
directions were 5 and 2 db on my antenna and 2 .5 and 1 on the Antenna
Specialists. It's up rather close to the rear window. I wonder if either
antenna would do better closer to the back of the trunk.

Chris
"Chris" wrote in message
nk.net...
I have constructed a homeade antenna that is mounted on a trunk-lip mount
on
a Nissan Sentra. The bottom is 18" of 1/2" copper pipe with a 3/8" theaded
adapter soldered in the bottom. There is a 9" long peice of pvc with a 2"
diameter 6ga. copper coil around it. Then there is 4" more copper pipe
with
a 3ft' stainless tip on top. The problem is that it would be too easy to
bend the trunk with copper pipe. I thought about a spring but then the
whole
thing would bend too much when the trunk is opened. If I move the coil
down
below roof level, the SWR goes way up. I thought about using pvc for the
lower part but I can't quite figure out how to construct it. I may take
some
pictures of what I have. Stay tuned......