Atlas loco's w/firecracker antennae?

[nkalanaga]

Peteski:  I've done that.  We have enough cats that finding whiskers is at least a weekly event.  They're a lot easier to see than one would think.

[Joetrain59]

I found four of them from the Atlas C420 in my parts bin. This after I started to strip some
 phone wire. At least after I use up these four, I won't need to get more from Atlas, if still in stock.
 Thanks,
   Joe D


PS, Mark, do you have any whiskers to sell?

[H Lee]

Years ago, friend of mine made those himself from a piece of standard solid telephone wire (24 or 26AWG?).  Take a short piece and strip the insulation from one end. Bare wire is the thin (lower) side of the antenna.  Then trim the insulated part of the wire to the height of the fatter end of the antenna. Presto, you now have a firecracker antenna. Paint it, drill a hole in the cab,and glue the stripped wire end in, leaving some of the stripped wire exposed.  Easy and cheap, and you probably have all the needed supplies at home.

Using a small piece of the insulation on a nylon bristle from a hairbrush or toothbrush works even better than using the wire itself! If bent the bristle snaps back into place by itself.

[peteski]

Using a small piece of the insulation on a nylon bristle from a hairbrush or toothbrush works even better than using the wire itself! If bent the bristle snaps back into place by itself.

Yes copper or steel strings, cat whiskers, bristles . . . all good ideas. The possibilities to be creative are almost endless.    Nylon fishing line would likely work too.

[spookshow]

Mark, do you have any whiskers to sell?

This sounds like a business opportunity that I don't want to get involved in, lol. However, if you want a few for free, I do have a dozen or so that I've picked up over the years. Just PM me.

-Mark

[nkalanaga]

How much would one sell a cat whisker for?  And would the customer get to choose the color, or would it be "whatever is available"? 

In our case, we can supply white, black, and orange/brown, although the orange/brown are very rare.  We also have ones that have both black and white, or orange/brown and white, or orange/brown and black.  Our orange cats were born with white whiskers, as they're both orange/brown and white.  As they get older, they have more black whiskers.  They'll be 11 this year.  Our to-be-17 Maine Coon mix now has two white whiskers, although she has very little white, being a dark tortoiseshell. 

No, we are NOT going into the cat whisker supply business!

[C855B]

For a more detailed view of the real thing:

https://www.pctel.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Outline-Dimensional-Drawings-20.pdf

The "ASP16" and "ASP22" model designations are from the original Antenna Specialists catalog. Like a lot of niche-market companies, AS was probably gobbled up two or three times since my radio shop days in the '70s and '80s. Never worked with PCTEL products.

Bendix and Motorola also made this particular style of "folded quarter wave" antenna. It was unique to RR applications, its design being for ruggedness and the handhold rules, where any appliance on rolling stock had to support the weight of a person. The ASP16 is VHF (160-161 MHz RR band) and the ASP22 is UHF, 452/457 MHz. You want the VHF version.

The only time I saw the UHF model was in Locotrol (early DPU) service. "Firecracker" was a railfan designation; we called them "peanut whistles". This design was already falling out of favor (late '70s) because they tended to catch tree limbs, etc., bending at the base. Sinclair had just upgraded their "Excalibur" line (railfan: "skates") to a lighter but more rugged design, so anything needing replacement got those.