Well my A-99 was showing it's age when I bought it...
the fiberglass was cracked, but hey it was only $20 and it was about a 1/4 mile from my house...
to fix the fiber glass I simply used for polyurethane floor sealer
however SWRs never really impressed me... 1.2 on channel 1 and 2ish on 40
however it was FLAT a band lower than CB
well I found that the coax where falling apart... not a good thing
SO I replaced the coax with some new RG8 mini
SWRs dropped to around 1.7 at the worse... still not going to cut it...
THEN I took some RG8 Mini and made a choke that was 5 turns @ 4.25"
this got me the following SWR readings:
1 - 1.325
40 - 1.125
-40 - 1.625
-80 - 1.95
-120 - 2.25
+40 - 1.7
+80 - 2.75
still nothing to write home about...
now I got rid of the ground wire... and isolated the antenna from he mast, using a 1.5" diameter dowel
then I took some scrap Aluminum tubing, L brackets, misc fasteners and hose clamps...
with this I built a simple yet effective ground plane kit..
now with out even telling the locals they asked me what I did differently
it even sounds better...
most importantly it has GREAT SWRs:
26MHz - 2.3
26.25 - 2.25
26.5 - 1.8
26.75 - 1.35
26.95 - 1.175
27.205 - 1.00
27.405 - 1.00
27.50 - 1.05
27.75 - 1.25
27.99 - 1.60
