Decent Temporary/Fixed Base UHF antenna on 462 Repeater?

[Cowboy]

We have a need for a UHF repeater antenna for field incidents.

The majority of the time the repeater is stationary at the team's tower in the center of our response area. Roughly 8-10 times a year, we have incidents outside of the coverage of tower, so we take the repeater and set it up with a mag mount antenna near the incident site. Horrible methodology but it's the way things were done well before I started with the team.

Anyways, we need a UHF antenna for a 462/467 split that is reasonably portable (17' fiberglass isn't exactly portable), with greater than 0 dBd gain that won't break the bank. Have bounced around the idea of using an NMO to Base converter kit, 1 in the travel kit, 1 permanently up the tower.

Feedline is fine; we have 7/8" hardline donated on the tower already and 9914 for portable use.

Budget is between $50-200.

Ideas?

[tvsjr]

9914? Ew. Garden hose. Excellent at carrying water from the antenna to the equipment below. LMR400UF or 1/2" Superflex would be a better choice. For duplex service, Superflex is really the best answer (possibility of duplex noise using coax).

What do you need in the way of height? A friend built several go-kits and found that Fender speaker stands work great for antenna mounts, and are actually cheaper than the antenna stands from Mighty Fine Junk. http://www.zzounds.com/item--FEN0699001000 for example.

Antenna-wise, the NMO converter kit will work, or look at one of the fiberglass sticks from PCTel Maxrad or RadiallLarsen. I can't get Tessco's site to work right now for pricing, but you should be able to find a decent stick for sub-$100. The amount of portability will limit your length, which will limit your gain. You pick the longest stick you're willing to carry.

I would *not* put an NMO converter kit on a tower. For the tower, you need a tower-class antenna, like a DB408 or DB420.

No, you're not going to get this done for $50-$200, unless you do lots of scrounging.

[Cowboy]

9914? Ew. Garden hose. Excellent at carrying water from the antenna to the equipment below. LMR400UF or 1/2" Superflex would be a better choice. For duplex service, Superflex is really the best answer (possibility of duplex noise using coax).

What do you need in the way of height? A friend built several go-kits and found that Fender speaker stands work great for antenna mounts, and are actually cheaper than the antenna stands from Mighty Fine Junk. http://www.zzounds.com/item--FEN0699001000 for example.

Antenna-wise, the NMO converter kit will work, or look at one of the fiberglass sticks from PCTel Maxrad or RadiallLarsen. I can't get Tessco's site to work right now for pricing, but you should be able to find a decent stick for sub-$100. The amount of portability will limit your length, which will limit your gain. You pick the longest stick you're willing to carry.

I would *not* put an NMO converter kit on a tower. For the tower, you need a tower-class antenna, like a DB408 or DB420.

No, you're not going to get this done for $50-$200, unless you do lots of scrounging.

Agreed on not getting much bang for the buck out of a $200 budget - just working with what the team has set aside for the project right now.

Coax is actually Belden 9913 foam core - temp solution, will upgrade as time allows. Would love to use some of the several thousand feet of quad shield RG11 I have laying around but haven't taken the time to build the 75 to 50 ohm matching stubs. Have used LMR400 and LMR600 in the past for VHF temporary base/repeater applications, worked rather well.

Currently we're using pretty much the same exact tripods (I think these were from American DJ)... Considering at the time you could buy them for under $30 shipped from PartSexPress.com, they work incredibly well.

I'm going to look in to the fiberglass stick from 'Maxrad and 'Larsen here this afternoon. I do have a local Maxrad dealer, however, he likes to charge 25% over list

Thanks for the input

Other suggestions?

[tvsjr]

25% over list? Ouch. Drop me a PM if you want... I have a Tessco account and can drop-ship stuff, and can usually do about 25-30 under list.