On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 14:26:18 -0700, Frank Gilliland
wrote:

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 14:41:07 -0400, Vinnie S.
wrote in :

snip
Should I return it?


Probably. If you want a decent antenna that you can use for both CB
-and- ham you should check out that link for the $4 cheapie (that I
provided in a post without insult). It will probably cost -you- about
$20 more because it requires a tuner which you probably don't have.
The idea is to just throw a couple wires in the trees and load them up
with the tuner -- that's it. It works better than any Imax or Antron,
it can be used for whatever power and spectrum is handled by the tuner
(usually 2-30 MHz), you can change the antenna at any time, you don't
have to worry about SWR, it's cheap, and it's so easy even a Geico
customer can do it.

A tuner-fed non-resonent length dipole is not the best solution for
CB. It is woefully inefficient and would be the wrong polarity for the
majority of CB work. They worked well on the ham bands because most
H.F contacts are DX in nature and you're relying on atmospheric
propagation to do most of the work. Try to work another ham 30 miles
away on the H.F bands and it is surprising how difficult it can be
with those wire antennas.

I ran a home brewed wire dipole on CB years ago, and used it in
addition to my main 5/8th wave antenna. While the dipole worked well
when the skip was running, locally, the signal from the dipole was a
few "S" units less than the ground plane. With 4 watts of power, you
don't get much range on a horizontal wire dipole strung in a tree.

For ham band use, I agree with you, just not for CB.

Dave
"Sandbagger"
http://home.ptd.net/~n3cvj