Re: Greetings from Darmain
Right, latest news!!
The CB kit turned up yesterday and last night saw some busy work getting it installed and working.
Installation was fairly staright forward. In the Hippo there is a comparment that houses a passenger airbag, which my model doesn't have. It offered itself nicely to holding the rig itself. Then came the dilema. The aerial is proving a pain to tune up properly so I felt it necesssary to have the SWR meter in the circuit all the time. Where to put that? In the glove box, there was a nice position for it to sit and its wired up such that all the connections occur inside the dashboard space and not in the globe box itself. Meant drilling some sizeable hols in the back of the globebox though.
Aerial tuning is proving a right pain. I've got two aerials and a mag mount. The 5 foot springer won't give me a better SWR than 2.5 and doesn't seem to be able to adjust long enough to improve on this. However, the little wip aerial got the SWR so low that I thought there was a fault. Naturally it isn't going to radiate as well so I'd rather get the springer working better. More work to do here.
Last night I tried it out, but try as I might I couldn't get a response to my requests for a rig check. I then went for a drive up to a high point looking over Swindon and got a copy from Corsham, which is in the opposite direction. :roll:
Now I remember why the old rig was never replaced. CB, isn't it a wonderful commmunication system.......
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