Whew... feels good to tear into a car project.

Though thankfully, aside from two or three of the plastic 'click studs' I didn't actually tear anything at all, and I'll just move the damaged ones to easilly-accessed panels so I can replace them later. But... the car's stripped except for the dashboard and front doors, so I'll be able to drop the headliner tommorow, install the CB antenna, get a rough tune on it and either leave the headliner out for a day or put the headliner back in for a night and put the soundproofing in on Saturday.

After yanking the interior out, I feel a lot more comfortable about reassembling everything in a single day on Saturday at least, so the car'll be ready to run at autocross on Sunday, albeit 60lbs heavier and a whole lot more silent inside. =^.^=

Um... yeah. I think I have too much antenna.

I... thought my SWR meter was broken at first. I was getting a 1.3 SWR with the naked antenna no matter what I did.

Then I hooked up the AM/FM/CB splitter, and re-tested. THAT let me throw the SWR all the way over to 3.0, so at least I know the meter works. But I ended up being able to get a 1.1 SWR on channels 1 and 40 equally, and it actually dipped lower (though I couldn't measure accurately below 1.1) towards the middle-channels. I think I can safely go buy a smaller antenna. =O.o=

And the 'quick fold over' is worthless. I'm going to delete it, and put the potbelly spring in with a shorter antenna I think, rush home, take a shower, then head to work. Ah well, anyone out there want a screwed-in-once 102" stainless-steel whip antenna in the KCMO area? Free?

And just to prove I did it:

Oh, and on a side-note. Dilbert listened!

The Dilbert website now has a Ultra-lean Version available, thanks to the shitstorm the bloated-with-flash version got. Even Scott Adams admits the company that re-did it went grossly overboard with the new version, and they're working to trim it down a lot. So... at least he listened, and for the time being (if not indefinately) has provided an ULTRA-lean, bare-bones 'just show me the damn comic' version of the site to boot. =^.^=