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Happy frikin' Chirstmas to all the Saus, and everyone here at CC

Just finished my first session of school, with very potent results with hard work, and now I've got a well-earned 2 weeks vacation.

For my Christmas gift, I told my girlfriend that she was buying me an homemade CB antenna for my Jeep TJ... which I built today. It's a 85 inches long fiberglass rod, you know those for telling you where not to go with the snowblower...? Yellow? Anywho, I twisted 22.5 foot of 18 gauge wire around it, with a tight coil on top, which makes a 5/8 wave cb antenna. Add an homemade mount, a stud, lots of epoxy glue, a nail and a bolt, and voilà!! I've got an brand new fiberglass antenna, for half the price of a Wilson or Firestik. I will mount it on the tire rack, because I think it's the best place to mount an antenna on a TJ with a hard top (or soft top for that matter). The TJ's are not the best trucks to put an antenna on, lack of ground plane.


Change of subject, so far I've learned to TIG weld, MIG weld, stick weld, bend sheet metal and most of all, RIVETING... which is a lot different than pop rivets. You need a rivet gun, pneumatic, solid rivets and a steel mass behind the rivet. Looks easier than it is. Even bending sheet aluminium looks easier that it really is, if you want precise lengths, 1000th of inches. Anyway, everything is 1000th of inches in aviation.

Thing I liked most yet is welding, and if I were not to go into aircraft maintenance, I would jump right into welding, especially TIG.

I think this is the longest message I've ever wrote here. I hope I did not make too much language errors.

Drink a beer on me

Merry Xmas to you and your loved ones EXOS.

Good to hear that all goes well with ya and FYI,
a good TIG welder is worth it's weight in gold



fled

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you too, EXOS!

Congrats on kickin' booty on your training....real glad it's working out so well!

Welding and metal work is indded a true art. Never could weld worth a darn when I tried it in my younger days. I worked for a company that had some incredibly skilled welders and from what I understand, aluminum and stainless steel are some of the most challenging materials to weld. These guys could lay perfectly-formed beads down all day long. Got welder's burn once or twice while spending too much time around them and looking at what they were doing...OUCH!


Will definitely have a beer on ya...Merry Christmas!

Glad to hear things are going good for you Exos.

Merry Christmas to you and the rest of ya smelly Swines!

MERRY CHRISTMAS GUYS

just got back from visiting the rents down in virginia

exos sounds like everythings going great so far

late merry christmas to everyone and an early happy new year

hehe

~S~