Thread Last Poster Posts Pages Last Post Archive through June 20, 2001 vernonott 1  1  6-20-01  7:51 pm   Closed: New threads not accepted on this page

Author Message   707 Posted on Thursday, July 05, 2001 - 3:04 pm:        It might not be bad to do the same thing with the top radiator..that is, a wrap of fiberglass and epoxy to take the strain off the threaded end. I had to do this after I dropped the antenna, top first, one day while working on the tower alone(not smart). It cracked the top whip right at the threaded piece. Since it didn't break all the way, I decided to fix it with epoxy and fiberglass cloth. After that, I noticed that my A99 top piece would stay straighter in a high wind than others I had seen being buffeted in the Oklahoma wind.   vernonott Posted on Thursday, July 05, 2001 - 6:03 pm:        That's one advantage to running a fiberglass antenna,real easy to repair.   HAM CBer Posted on Friday, July 06, 2001 - 11:20 am:        Awesome idea 707. I'm a little nervous watching the A99 on the mountain in the 90 MPH winds. It's going to be interesting to see if my new 'beefed up' A99 handles the 100+ MPH winds this winter. I wish I had beefed up the top section now.... It sure wiggles around a lot. I only added epoxy resin to the bottom most section. However, I did coat the entire antenna with a UV resistant color coating to help keep the fiberglass from splintering in the sun. The first A99 I put up looked like a million fiberglass threads after only a few months. The downside is that the tuning chaged a lot. With both tuning rings completely bottomed out, the center of resonance just barely got down to 27.125 MHz. No room for error now!