Bent 102" CB whip

I just grabbed a new one myself, a Hustler from Walcott CB. And replaced the 7" shaft I had under it with a proper 6".

My old one was beat to a pulp and lost the ball on the end, plus the 7" shaft was not SS and was rusting.

 

I've broken a few 102's. Surprisingly, they tend to break at the base right above the "fitting", the thickest part.

 

Back in the late '60's there was a guy that drove a station wagon that a 102" whip on each corner. In fact each whip was made by combining 2 102" whips. Making a total of 8 whips.

leon
kc0iv

 

It is all subjective--subject to a lot of factors. How "skinny" is the wire in that fiberglass whip, how close its wound (coil "Q" factor, etc). If you take one of those gi-normous Predators and put it up on the mirror, perhaps it does beat the steel whip. I don't think it would IF you could mount it on the mirror, too. That's because coils don't help or boost your signal. In fact they actually hinder it to one degree or another--again, depending on wire size, coil diameter, spacing and such. Coils *may* look "cool", or "tough", but they don't really help anything. They are compromises to get around height restrictions and mounting locations. At 27 MHZ, the 9 foot whip IS the correct length for a mobile, but we can't always achieve that--especially with tall trucks. Loading coils tend to produce heat (resistance) instead of signal, but not enough to prevent your CB from working OK. One example is, the heater under one's desk to warm one's feets. See if it has little coils that glow red. They produce resistance, thus heat. In a heater, well and good. In an antenna, not so good. So, we do try to get around the logistics as best we can. Tall truck, tall antenna? Ah, no! Tall truck, short antenna. Better, but not the best. I DO see some flat bed trucks with 102" whips on 'em! Prob'ly works pretty good!

BTW, there IS a way to set up the whip and have it tied down somewhat, but you have to "tune" it for that condition (cut, lengthen, shorten as needed). But it would need to stay that way. The SWR would go out of whack when it was allowed to straighten up. If your cab is fiberglass, I don't think it would affect the signal too much. You do have to remember that because most CB antennas are vertical, if you slant any antenna too much, it affects the polarity (phase) and *may* attenuate your signal somewhat. OTH, depending on which antenna you're comparing it with, the whip may still beat a closely wound, short fiberglass whip. YMMV.

 

There's no question that in a perfect installation, the 108" resonant whip will be the superior antenna. The real world gets messy, and that's why sometimes a shorter antenna, mounted high and in the clear,over a proper ground plane, will outperform a long whip that's mounted low where much of the signal is being blocked by the vehicle body. K0BG has an excellent treatise on mobile antennas at his website, k0bg.com.

 

In other words if ya mess with her she'll take that bad boy off and BEAT YA LIKE A YELLOW DOGG......