[ARC5] Re: [Milsurplus] Re: Antenna tricks

[Dan Arney]

When my friend Cecil W6CL ex W5PCA and I were Tech Reps for Land-AIr out 
of Chicago in early 50's I had a Mercury with a BC-459 rock bound on 
3995 and a Gonset converter and a Master Mobile Whip powered by a PE-103 
dyno backed up by a Leace Neville alternator. On a sat. night in SC we 
had eaten at a diner and came out and fired up my rig to check in on the 
Georgia Cracker net and hopefully raise someone on the Dallas Caravan net.
We took out a 40 watt florescent tube with Cecil holding and I started 
calling CQ hoping to raise some one. Customers started coming out of the 
diner and saw Cecil holding tube 18 to 24 inches away from the whip with 
it modulating as I talked a Colored guy came up close to look to see if 
a wire was connected, Cecil changed hands to hand it to the guy and it 
went out, as he changed hands he got it close to relight it and said to 
the guy hold this for me a minute while I check some thing. Cecil said 
this guys eyes got as big as silver dollars and he was out there right now.

By this time we had maybe 35 or so people standing around looking to see 
how it worked they were out in the street and on the sidewalk. Local 
police came up and asked us to move as we were blocking traffic.

We had fun with that several times in different towns as we were going 
from AFB to base working on planes.

Hank
KN6DI