CB DAZE: February 2025

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

STRANGE MATES: THE CHAMELEON CHA-HYBRID MINI AND 17' TELESCOPING ANTENNA

IT EXCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS

I often buy equipment that I don't have an immediate use for, sometimes during a regular sale, in this case, Chameleon's "Blemished Sale". Two years after we moved, I decided that I needed a better antenna, so I pulled all of the sale and blemished goods out of the closet to figure out what I was going to do.

I immediately came to the quickest, and easiest solution that a lazy ham like me likes to do. I grabbed Chameleons 12" ground spike, their 17' stainless steel telescoping whip, and pulled their Hybrid mini from its kit box, then headed for the backyard.

This is what I did:

As the image on the left explains, I unscrewed the ring and nut on top of the Hybrid Mini, and the two nuts off of the bottom post.

This allowed me to screw the 17ft. whip into the top, and 12" ground spike into the bottom.

Sitting on the back porch I had my Comet 350 antenna analyzer and played around with the length of the whip until I got decent SWR results on both 10 and 11m (yep, I ham on 10, and CB on 11).

My SWR on both bands were the same - 1.5:1 and I was pretty happy.

This is what it looks like. Initially I did not use any ground or counterpoise wires.

Previously I'd been using a system born of necessity, a 10/11 meter antenna on a magnetic mount base, on the center of the roof of my vehicle.

I ran 50' of RG8 coax from the shack, under two rugs, and out the front door. From there I was careful to snake the coax behind and around objects, then connecting it with a barrel connector to my mag mount antenna. This was a surprisingly good setup and I had no problems talking DX on 10 meters. In fact, the day before I started my project in the backyard, I talked to a fellow in Italy, getting a 57 report.

Back to my project: I used a Comet CT-50 to connect my coax at the back door, slide the Comet pass-thru inside the house, then connect the remaining coax (100ft) to it, then all the way to the front of the house and into the shack, where it connected to a switch box. DX has been pretty crazy so it wasn't hard to find stations and do an A/B comparison between the new antenna, and the one on the car. Later that night I talk to a couple locals, once again A/B switching and the final results said it was close, but not as good as the car antenna - I lost 1-2 S-Units on it.

The next day I found 2 10ft pieces of stranded wire, so I took them and the Teflon wire that had come with the CHA-Hybrid-min kit and connected them to the ground terminal. So I had 2 10ft. wires, and about 25ft of the Teflon wire, leaving the remainder coiled up at the end.

My Comet analyzer showed a small decrease in SWR, with both 10 and 11 meters @ 1:3.1 SWR. Back into the shack I went to do further A/B tests, and I found that there was no discernible difference in my reception, and my local transmit had improved to where I could even hear Jim when he switched to his horizontal antenna - and he could hear me! I was a happy camper.

I made that installation permanent by routing 100ft of RG8 cable as clandestine as possible, from the shack, all the way to the back yard. You'd be happy with the previous results, but it got better:

Connecting the Comet I tried 10, 11, 12, 15, 20, 40, and 80 meters. 10-20 meters yielded an SWR that varied from 1.3:1 to 1.8:1. 80 meters had the worst SWR at 2.8:1 but it was low enough for my internal ATU to give me a great match. My head was in the clouds for several days when I remembered that I could use the same coaxial port on the Comet to read 50 and 2 meters. They were ... both ... 1.8:1 ... and I felt as if I'd struck gold with this antenna setup.

Who would have thought a 5:1 transformer with a 17' whip (not fully extended) could yield such results? Not me. I was just goofing off making my "Frankenttena" for fun, and now I'll have plenty of good times! The whip can't be seen from the street, so I hope the HOA Nazis won't catch on. In the meantime, I hear a station from Spain on 10 meters calling CQ with a pileup, and I'm confident I'll get him. So what parts do you have laying around? Perhaps it's time for you to try some antenna experimentation!

QUICK EDIT -

I neglected to mention that I borrowed a common mode choke from my Chameleon F-Loop 2.0 to avoid any backwards current issues. I replaced it with a larger one made by Palomar. The other one is once again connected to my F-Loop.

UPDATE: 02/27/2025

I ordered the Chameleon 21" ground spike from DX Engineering a couple of days ago because I wanted to get deeper into the ground, and it arrived last night. I pushed the new spike into the ground about 8” from the one I’ve been using, and moved the antenna over to it. The spike has about 1” above ground, to connect to my radial wires. Originally, I had 6, but 3 of the 10' wires got loose from their crimps, and I was too lazy to go inside and re-crimp 'em, so I only had 3 wires to put back on: 2 – 10’ and the 1 – 25’). I put the coax back onto the Hybrid-mini and went inside to check it with my Comet 500 antenna analyzer. Lacking the 3 additional wires, but having a lot longer ground spike, I hoped for the best - and boy howdy did I get it! Here's the results:

1.890 MHz, which was previously off-scale 3.5:1

3.900 MHz, previously a hair under 3 2.5:1

7.200 MHz 2.1:1

14.310 1.5:1

21.200 1.2:1

24.830 1.2:1

27.400 1.1:1

28.500 1:1

50.125 1:1

146.94 1.4:1

For now, I'm not going to doing anything else, other than weather sealing the coax connections. It's great weather outside so I guess if I'm going to monkey around with anything else, it should be lawn work...

Catch ya'll on the next post -

WOODY

Friday, February 21, 2025

HEATHKIT CB-1 "LUNCH BOX"

A BRIEF LOOK

AT THE

CB-1

In the early days of Citizens Band (CB) radio in the United States, long before its widespread popularity in the 1970s, it was primarily used for personal and business communication. The typical "CBer" was often a trades person—a plumber, electrician, or fuel delivery driver—relying on the radio as a functional tool for their work. CB radios served as utilitarian devices, not yet a part of the pop culture phenomenon they would later become.

At the time, the 23-channel band was far less congested than it would later become. There were several channels with little to no activity, allowing for more straightforward communication. Early CB radios, in particular, were simple and sparse in design. Many lacked advanced features, such as signal meters, and often only had 1 to 5 preset channels for transmitting, with the full 23-channel range still available for manual tuning. In fact, the very first models often didn’t include a dedicated transmit/receive relay. Instead, users had to manually engage the transmission by pushing a button or moving a lever, much like the Heathkit CB-1, which required manual operation for both transmission and reception.

This CB-1 was commonly known as the Heathkit "Lunchbox", and it was so popular Heathkit designed other lunchboxes for 2, 10, and 6 meters!

The circuitry was as simple as it could get, and it was believed the Heath company got the idea and circuit from an article written by my personal 11m hero, "Don Stoner", in the March 1959 issue of "Radio & TV News" magazine. By comparing the circuit, it was hard to deny that the CB-1 was a close copy of Mr. Stoners design.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR A LARGER, EASIER TO READ PAGE

At one time I owned the 11, 10, and 6 meter lunchboxes, but display space and other radios led me to reduce them to just the 11m model, but it still looks pretty darn good!

SPECIFICATIONS:

Imagine yourself living in 1960 and owning a CB radio that only had one channel for transmit, and a variable tuner for 1-23. That's quite a difference from what we have today.

Here are some links about the CB-1 that I found on the Internet for your perusal...

ONLINE ASSEMBLY MANUAL

CB TRICKS SAMS SERVICE MANUAL

Have a great weekend, talk some great DX, and see ya later - 'Nuff Said.

WOODY