Hello Jimmie D:

Well the Moonraker 4 and 6 element beams where a great design for the
hardware to get real cheap for production. The Hubs that attached the
Elements to the Boom are made from Cast Aluminum. Real cheap to
manufacture, but in time they break and crack making the Moonraker Beams
useless. I had new Hubs made from 6061 T6 Billet Aluminum made from a
CNC Mill. Now the Hubs are bullet proof. But expensive!

But the problem for manufacturing something using large quantities of
materials is always been a design art.

Jay in the Mojave


Jimmie D wrote:


The moonraker is a pretty decent antenna but like a lot of CB
antennas the manufctures were trying to sell elements. They stuff as
many elements as they can on a boom that is still UPS shipable. I
remember back in the 70s how a few people would claim that ther e3
element beam was better than the 4 they used to have and now I
believe they may have been right. I extended the boom on mine and
respaced the elements vertical for 11M and horizontal for 10. Any way
I guess the point I was trying to make to start with before I rambled
is that my Al tubing and coax gamma match easily handles a full KW on
10. Why cant the manufacturers make something that is so easy to
make? At the risk of appearing to answer my own question I think it
was because if they did consumers would realize you can go down to
the hardware store and buy the parts and roll your own about as easy
as you can build thiers out of the box.