Back in the Citizen Band (CB) radio days (mid 70’s) I had an Antenna Specialists Starduster. I installed it on a 20 foot galvanized pole from the peak of my family home in Alpharetta, Georgia. This put the top of the antenna at 40 feet. I don’t remember where I purchased the Starduster but the poles, mounts, ground wire, coaxial cable and guy wires all came from the Roswell, Georgia Radio Shack. I ran the coax down the side of the chimney, into the crawl space, and then back up through the floor of my bedroom. This was one of the most popular antennas of the 1970’s, omni-directional with a 1/4 wave ground plane and 9 foot diameter. They claimed it had a 5 db gain, which is doubted by most, but the antenna worked well and was highly regarded in the CB world around me.
When the atmospheric conditions were right, I could skip talk long distances to other states which was a lot of fun. Don’t tell anyone but I had a linear amp, and with it on, I could talk very long distances consistently with the Starduster.
Lightning struck my antenna, destroying the Starduster and melting the ground wire all the way into the ground, burning a 3 foot circle around the grounding rod in the grass.
It also melted the coax all the way to my bedroom (the CB radio was in my car at the time) and almost started a fire in a closet in my house (lucky the house wasn’t burned down)!
plan to emt electrical conduit pipe for mast for just bought Starduster, what is diamter of hub for proper pipe to use.
Sorry, I don’t remember, it was too long ago, but good luck, I’m sure it will be cool.
Got a ten foot section of conduit at one and half inches, Oops, too big for hub that holds ground plane elenents out at angle. So took a seven foot section of fiber glass pole from a defunct long reach tree trimmer and covered it with metal tape (not duct tape) used on ac ducts. worked good for now. WIll get a ten foot section of conduit now at one and quarter inches to replace that fiber glass pole. Living on a small hill that will be all the mast I will need added to the conduit I already have anchored to a steel six foot T -fence post. Put a 90 degree angle conduit joint at the bottom pole for coax exit. Used the two screws joining the conduit and angle as points to attach 6 gauge wire grounding connections. Antenna has fantasic ears, with good skip covers from Austrailia all the way to Western Europe and points inbetween. Running bare foot, no amp, so good ears, but not distant transmit.