Simple ant queston

Do you have a picture of that bracket you are talking about?

 

I thought you'd like that picture since you've never seen one.

 

well looks pretty fancy too me. true I've never seen those...not really relevant to anything I'd ever need... but it's interesting ... where you find this stuff baffles me....

 

Of course you can tune a Francis. You just cut it like you would any other antenna, or add a spring. Usually it isn't necessary though. I knew an old trucker that always tuned his. He'd trim off a little at a time until he got it were he wanted it. He liked a flat SWR across the band. He cleaned all his grounds regularly too. Hard to argue with his methods. He ran the same mail route every night and you could hear him coming and going a loooonnng time over the rest of the trucks that ran that route.

 

I believe I saw them at the TA truck stop in Kingman Arizona

 

one thing about it is what your showing there is quality not like the 4-4and a half and 5ft. fiberglass sticks they sell in almost all truck stops......

 

The quality is in the swaging of the ferrule to the fiberglass in the original Francis antenna. The new ones are not swaged. Instead they are epoxied into the ferrule.
After vibrating on a tractor trailer for a couple months the epoxy starts to crack and the antenna starts to fall apart on the newer ones

 

in other words their just plain out and out cheap.....

 

Definitely not made how they used to be