I've used the Diamond CP62 for many years and its got some gain but its also got some little capacitors in the base that limit its power. I burned mine up and replaced the caps with much better ones and now it can handle 500W just fine. I also had a Cushcraft 6M Ringo. Actually it was a heavy duty commercial version but the Ringos don't decouple the coax from the antenna very well and your mast and coax become part of the antenna. I only used the Ringo a few times camping and I recently dumped it at a local ham swap meet.
If I had to do it over again I would get the Sirio Tornado 6m 5/8 antenna for $89 US. It fairly bullet proof and there is a company that remanufactures what looks like a Sirio CB antenna into a super heavy duty version of the Tornado called a Dominator. Its nice but pricy.
Sirio Tornado 50-60 Mhz Omni-Directional 6M Vertical Base Antenn [tornado6m] - $89.00 : Sirio Antenna, High Performance Antenna Made in Italy
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A couple of the posts in this thread have mentioned that the Diamond CP-62 6m vertical antenna has capacitors in the base assembly. I have a CP-62, which I've been having a lot of trouble getting to tune (SWR 10:1), and it does not have the capacitors in the base. Does anyone have a picture of these and/or a schematic? Perhaps that would explain why this antenna won't work in its factory configuration.
