Microwave radio parts at an unlikely place.

The "U-Pick-Parts" junkyard in Sunland. There's always Ford Exploders in there, and I needed a "new" plastic intake plenum-tube thing. After retrieving what I needed from a '94 that incredibly did indeed look worse than my '93, I figured I'd double back to where I saw a bunch of taxi cabs and look for radio bits and NMO antennas. Nothing. Saw a row of big-rig truck cabs.

One had a funny radome-looking thing mounted up high. I mean, really high, it was about 9 feet up off the ground. I got up under it and looked, and saw what I had hoped, Qualcomm! So this was what an omni-track looks like when its not in pieces in an old cardboard box at an SBMS meeting. ;)

So I moved a big truck wheel underneath of it, and held on to that spring thats on the back of the cab that holds the air brake lines, and removed the thing. At $17, it will be the most expensive one ever converted to Ham use! Fun convincing the cashier it was "just" a fancy antenna.

under that rotating antenna:

Now its starting to look familiar!