any cd/radio junkies out there?

just a question for you..i did some looking on-line but couldn't find it... in the last moth or so in a particular area of downtown i've seen a suv running around. it has 2, 5 foot white antennas on the roof about 3-4 feet apart with no visible mount backet on roof. it looks like they go directly into vehicle. about 4 inches up on the antennas, they make 3 or 4 twists about 5 inches in diameter. just a cb??

oh...there are no makings on vehicle and the windows are 'blacked out'....i've been able to see that it is not just dark tinting...it is always driving somewhat erratic..ie making sudden turns at the last second...hmmmm so ..just a cb??

Did they look something like this clearmind??


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(Image taken from www.ssbusa.com... )

depending on scale, the twist look about the right size but the antenna is verticle and about the thikness of an index finger......

Probaly FBI, I live right around the corner from a Fed building and they have what you described on there trucks. Was it a Chevy Suburban?.

hmmmm..it is a ford navaho or a ford explorer...and guess what building i see it around...fed reserve bank...i've been i law enforcement and did survailance for many years. if they are just cb type antennas and it is conducting some type of survailance..they sort of stick out... i was wondering if it could be searching for signals rather than transmitting...

I have also seen these on New Police cars to, Perhaps the way they transmit from the Comptuers they have now? Just a guess On that though.

But could be a cell phone intercept, Fed Reserve, you might here stuff and such

[Edited on 1-4-2004 by ShiftTrio]

that crossed my mind too...seems like an awfully big antenna..much bigger than any i've seen on the mobile ie cars and suburan type command posts...well, i've gotta run up that way now...maybe i'll see 'em...bringing my binoculars

Are the antennae vertically mounted? They sound like they might be helically wound, like this, although shown horizontal, they would be mounted vertically:


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Image by Firestik

I had one of these when I was an (illegal) cber in the early 1980's (Good buddy!!)

this picture also made me think,,, if it looks like this and it horizontal, could be pointed in a certain direction for listening ...

Not really EO: the Firestik is essentailly an omnidirectional antenna, so it would radiate (and receive) around the axis of the antenna ie at right angles to where the antenna was "pointed". So, the maximum energy received *isn't* "along" the antenna but at 90degrees to it.

The original antenna I put up here (now a broken link but accessible from the URL) *would* be more sentitive to where it was pointed, as the parabolical "dish" concentrates the radio energy onto the helically wound element.

The Firestik was a good "hidden" antenna for cb, incidentally: around 4 feet in length, and with a biscuit tin for a ground plane (earth) with suitable radials, you could hide it in the loft/ attic/ roof space and work 27Mhz all around town (and attempt dx on ssb into Europe - my best dx (long distance) communication was with an Italian station from my Yaesu FT101 HF transceiver (with 27Mhz crystal fitted) running around 10watts RF into the firestik!!

Of course, I went on and became "legal" radio ham and "worked the world" via cw (morse code) using much less power than this (but with more efficient aerials!!)!!

no, no, I didn't mean the Firestick exactly, I meant something that looks like that in general, pointed Horizontally, could be used for listening.... that's all.

Maybe what is being seen is really a truck driving around listening in on conversations ?