wayne..i just reread tour post and realized what you plan to do.....by mounting base loaded whip inside fuse you arent gaining anything over your original long wire ant that came with reciever.....you see antanna efficiency /or gain is measured in decible/dB.....say your original rec long wire ant for 72 mhz.....is natural fraction of wavelength....ie 1/4 wave....1dB gain.....1/2 wave....4 dB gain...full wave....16 dB gain...this shows gain as a function of wavelenght or lenght of ant is logrythmic...so say your original 1/8 wave ant measured 38 in lenght....ok...its tuned to a natural fraction...a harmonic....call its gain 1 dB...the only problem...its braided wire.....and if you want to mount it in a particular orientation.....you have to sopport it..ie a tube etc or it would blow arround like crazy....so a ant designer uses a shorter stiff ant rod.....say 10/12 inches....but is in itsself not a natural harmonic....by its self the gain would be some negative number over the original....so the designer attaches a coil of wire in series with his short stiff ant.....usually at the base....thus loading his short ant back into a natural harmonic....a base loaded whip......however the coil is not!!! an amplifer....its over all gain is not as good as original long wire assuming you could orrient both the same....the whip prob has a 1/2 -1dB lost over original....they advantage Wayne...is that you can mount whip....straight up/down/sideways away from electrically noisy components....but your not doing that!!!you hate the look as i do....so your going to lay the thing in most convenence spot....4 in away from reciever/power expander...oriented parallel to fuse and all the other stuff running same way....cf/servo wires/power/ecf lines etc...but you are doing it with a degraded ant.....as far as range check goes if you took the time to mount both ant ...alligned the same way...i gurantee you the range with original wire will be greater then whip as you described.....will it work...probably...you wont notice the difference.....until something really noisy comes allong like a smoke pump w/ dirty brushes....see digitech 's sad demise of airworld L39....off soapbox.....kp couch