"James Barrett" wrote in message
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John Smith wrote:
art wrote:

...
yep, and this is where you get the amps to melt them
down:http://www.davemade.com/mobile.htm

You may be looking at the spring between the antenna and the bumper
which allows a long whip style antenna
to bend with the wind while mobile
Art


Ohh that's a loading coil alright, seen plenty of 'em at
cb-swap/meets/shows in the midwest. The shows used to be a lot more
open, now you have to know someone or be invited.

He should be warned, those BIG mobile amps draw a lot of amps and you'll
be into adding extra batteries in the trunk and alternators under the
hood! (think ambulance/swat-team/military vehicle industrial
alternators.)

Also, those BIG base amps can cause you to drop a new box into yer
house/shack to supply the power--above 5KW just gets too crazy, IMHO ...
and don't even think about it unless you have a place out in the boonies.

Anything above the smallest base amp with the big tubes is kinda
crazy--IMHO.

You want to run more power than that, think about starting up a real
am/fm broadcast station!

Regards,
JS

Hi, I'm not really sure what all of that means. I'm learning about
antennas, and I've been doing a lot of reading on the web until I can
get a copy of the ARRL Antenna book. I'm learning the terminology and
the other day read a thread about loading coils. I had no idea what that
was, so I went in search of an explanation. So, when I saw the radio
shop selling antennas with funny looking coils I wondered if that's what
a loading coil looked like. But I had expected a loading coil to be at
the bottom of the antenna, these looked like they might be in the middle
of the antenna. Does that even work?

BTW, I enjoy reading old threads from Roy and Cecil. A ton of great
information there. I have learned alot, and have much more to learn. I
want to try to make a 2 meter yagi (3 elements) this weekend and
experiment a little. Maybe I can finally hit that repeater 30 miles
away. ;-)

Jim

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generally the higher up the antenna the loading coil is the more efficient
the antenna is... but there are tradeoffs in mechanical strength and wind
load.