[Lazyone]

and you know what, all was not lost,

i broke the sg7500 i had on my ute, i clipped the handle of the garbage bin that the useless gardeners put a bit closer than normal to where i park my ute,

it snapped right above the base, so the top half was in perfectly good nick, just the bottom half was FUBAR,

so what did i do....

i had a old fibreglass antenna that got broken off by a derro at a bns, so the 5/16 ferrule was ok,

i drilled out the remaining stub to 6.5mm, the fibreglass was 1/4" so it only took out .15mm, giving me a nice clean brass surface to work with.

so now for the nitty gritty.

i turned down a small brass plug to 6.55 mm x 17mm long and used the bench vice to press it in, then i used some low temp silver solder to fix it in there permanently, then i found approx. centre and drilled it out to the same diameter as the bottom section of the antenna x15mm deep, then i dipped the bottom section in the flux and cut a small (bout 2-3mm) piece of silver solder, and dropped it down the hole, bit of even heat and down it dropped the last few mm and seated really nicely, quick coat of duragal and thats that.

looks almost like a bought one, so now i have a 2m/70cm antenna with a 5/16 x 26tpi base,

time taken, about 30min,

tools needed lathe, bench vice, oxy/lpg set, low temp silver solder and flux, drill and drill bits,

in saying that you can buy 1/4" brass rod from hardware stores if you dont have access to a lathe etc.

skill level required, well im a fitter so it was pretty easy for me, but anyone with better than average mechanical knowledge will be able to do it very easily,

any questions, ill answer them the best i can

[ozstickman]

Has it changed the SWR??

[rumbles]

Veeeery nice work Lazy!

[Lazyone]

havent thrown it on a swr meter, but i use it as a RX only scanner antenna so im not too worried,