Batboard

I will be getting a new Impala soon and the boss doesn't want it to look like a porcupine. We switched from VHF high band to 800 mHz trunked at the end of last year, so the Motorola XTS5000 in the XTVA will have a patch antenna and the EVDO aircard will have a little antenna mounted inside. I would still like to be able to use my Yaesu FT-8800 from time to time, but I have very little experience with hidden/covert/disguise antennas for VHF/UHF. My personal prejudice is that they simply don't work very well, but it has been a long time since I have looked at them. I don't really like the idea, but I have given some thought to a Comet B10 mounted inside on the package shelf. The exposure to RF concerns me, but I suppose I could just make sure to always use low power when actually transmitting. http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/ ... /3918.html
http://www.sti-co.com/antenna-products/ ... f-antenna/

I also looked at the Antenex Phantom Elite, but I can't tell from their webpage if this is a body mount or a trunk lid mount. http://www.antenex.com/index051206.htm

Jim1348 wrote:I will be getting a new Impala soon and the boss doesn't want it to look like a porcupine. We switched from VHF high band to 800 mHz trunked at the end of last year, so the Motorola XTS5000 in the XTVA will have a patch antenna and the EVDO aircard will have a little antenna mounted inside. I would still like to be able to use my Yaesu FT-8800 from time to time, but I have very little experience with hidden/covert/disguise antennas for VHF/UHF. My personal prejudice is that they simply don't work very well, but it has been a long time since I have looked at them. I don't really like the idea, but I have given some thought to a Comet B10 mounted inside on the package shelf. The exposure to RF concerns me, but I suppose I could just make sure to always use low power when actually transmitting. http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/ ... /3918.html
http://www.sti-co.com/antenna-products/ ... f-antenna/

I also looked at the Antenex Phantom Elite, but I can't tell from their webpage if this is a body mount or a trunk lid mount. http://www.antenex.com/index051206.htm

The Phantom Elite is a standard NMO antenna - they can be used with most any NMO mount, whether it's a 3/4" hole mount, trunk lip or L bracket combo. Expect slightly less performance than a 1/4 wave and much narrower bandwidth.

Any of the "scrunched up" funny looking antennas will have a VHF bandwidth of
no more than 1 mHz, which ain't good for hamming. However, on UHF their
bandwidth gets much better. My experience with putting comm antennas inside
cars has been that in VERY strong signal areas they work okay but the minute
the signal drops off so does the sensitivity of the antenna.

AFAIK, Antenex doesn't make a dual-band VHF/UHF Phantom antenna. They come in monoband-only. And yes, anything less than a 19'' 1/4-wave whip is not going to work very well on VHF.

He doesn't want a porcupine? One or two external antennas does not a porcupine make... porcupii only start when you cross the double-digit antenna limits!\

Seriously, what about a 3dB gain UHF and a VHF quarterwave on the roof? Or perhaps a Larson NMO2/70B on a lip mount up front? Most people won't even notice it.

BTW, the Comet B10s suck, and have a high failure rate. A friend of mine has a few and has had many problems out of them - outright failures, being improperly tuned from the factory (centered at 155 and 480), etc.

Unfortunately, you're playing with the laws of physics. You wad an antenna up (transit antenna), put it inside a metal box (package tray), etc., you're just not going to get the performance you want.

Here is what we use for both VHF and UHF ham, Comtelco A1132. We have had very good results with them.

http://www.comtelcoantennas.com/PDF%20D ... /A1132.pdf

I for one have had great sucess with the B10 and Diamond clone. Both work very well in my opinion and have used quite a few of them on UC applications. Again just my 2 cents worth
Jeff

FWIW, I am using the PCTel 700/800 (which is the Motorola OEM, but in black) via a Diamond MX3000. It works very well on VHF/UHF/800. On the VHF side, it sucks at 144.39, but seems to work tx/rx at 145.xxx and up. The SWR at 146.52 was boarder line on an Astro Spectra pushing 60? watts. I haven't tested it in the current config with a VHF XTL5k, Orion UHF and 800 XTL5k.