Quarter Century Old Magnetic Mount VHF Antenna!

I have been having this magnetic mount VHF antenna for over a quarter century. It was given to me by a local ham friend. When I was off the air for nearly a decade it found its place in the attic junk space. As soon as I got my amateur radio license renewed last year, I wanted to go on air and I immediately fished out this magnetic mount VHF antenna from the attic. Along with it was my TM 261 base station which was also working on low power inspite of being kept away for quite a long time. So I could use the duo to access Calicut and Tirur repeaters. I had kept this magnetic mount VHF antenna on top of a multi-gym on my first floor room as a metallic ground plane!

The radiating element of this antenna is about 54cm long, making it function like a quarter wave ground plane antenna on VHF amateur radio band. It has a fair length of coaxial cable attached, about 4m, which is enough to route it from the roof of a car to the dash of the car. But I have never used it as a mobile antenna, only as an indoor antenna to access local repeaters. The radiating element has a PL 259 connector which fits in to the SO 239 connector on the magnetic mount base. There is another PL 259 connector at the far end of the cable for connection to the radio. Earlier I had checked the VSWR of this antenna and posted the different values while using a metallic and non-metallic base and shown that a good metallic base is important to function as a good ground plane for this antenna.