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Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:00 am
by DocHolliday
Let's hear what you guys favorite antennas are that you use on installs or your personal pov's and the performance of them?
I use various ones on installs here, anything from larsen,antenna specialist,maxrad, ect.
Like the maxrads because they have such a broadband coverage of 38mgh bandwidth that allows you to use the one antenna for commercial and ham on 1 radio with real good swr on vhf or uhf.
Re: Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:33 am
by Tom in D.C.
I'd sure like to see one of those antennas with 38 mHz of useable bandwidth on both
UHF and VHF, because in all my many years of hamming I've never seen one yet.
Re: Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:54 am
by DocHolliday
Tom in D.C. wrote:I'd sure like to see one of those antennas with 38 mHz of useable bandwidth on both
UHF and VHF, because in all my many years of hamming I've never seen one yet.
Hi Tom,
Here is the website, I have mounted a vhf and a uhf model of these just recently and they are to spec as listed and perform well.
http://www.maxrad.com/product_overview_ ... _num=10932
Re: Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 7:09 am
by Cowboy
DocHolliday wrote:Let's hear what you guys favorite antennas are that you use on installs or your personal pov's and the performance of them?
I use various ones on installs here, anything from larsen,antenna specialist,maxrad, ect.
Like the maxrads because they have such a broadband coverage of 38mgh bandwidth that allows you to use the one antenna for commercial and ham on 1 radio with real good swr on vhf or uhf.
I'm guessing he's referring to these:
http://wildcard.pctel.com/images_produc ... deband.pdf
Which has a "38 MHz" bandwidth on VHF and "140 MHz" bandwidth on the very wideband UHF.
The majority of the Maxrad quarter waves are spec'd for the full 144-174 MHz spread but only with a 1.5:1 VSWR across 5 MHz of that spread.
I'm personally an Antenex fan - we have over 2000 Phantoms in use here locally and hundreds of UHF 5/8 and VHF 5/8 whips - usual failure is blunt force trauma.
Re: Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:10 am
by DocHolliday
Cowboy wrote:DocHolliday wrote:Let's hear what you guys favorite antennas are that you use on installs or your personal pov's and the performance of them?
I use various ones on installs here, anything from larsen,antenna specialist,maxrad, ect.
Like the maxrads because they have such a broadband coverage of 38mgh bandwidth that allows you to use the one antenna for commercial and ham on 1 radio with real good swr on vhf or uhf.
I'm guessing he's referring to these:
http://wildcard.pctel.com/images_produc ... deband.pdf
Which has a "38 MHz" bandwidth on VHF and "140 MHz" bandwidth on the very wideband UHF.
The majority of the Maxrad quarter waves are spec'd for the full 144-174 MHz spread but only with a 1.5:1 VSWR across 5 MHz of that spread.
I'm personally an Antenex fan - we have over 2000 Phantoms in use here locally and hundreds of UHF 5/8 and VHF 5/8 whips - usual failure is blunt force trauma.
Yeah Those are the ones and they do a good job with no problems to report yet.
I like the antenex as well, never had any problems with those either.
Re: Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 12:35 pm
by Cowboy
DocHolliday wrote:Cowboy wrote:DocHolliday wrote:Let's hear what you guys favorite antennas are that you use on installs or your personal pov's and the performance of them?
I use various ones on installs here, anything from larsen,antenna specialist,maxrad, ect.
Like the maxrads because they have such a broadband coverage of 38mgh bandwidth that allows you to use the one antenna for commercial and ham on 1 radio with real good swr on vhf or uhf.
I'm guessing he's referring to these:
http://wildcard.pctel.com/images_produc ... deband.pdf
Which has a "38 MHz" bandwidth on VHF and "140 MHz" bandwidth on the very wideband UHF.
The majority of the Maxrad quarter waves are spec'd for the full 144-174 MHz spread but only with a 1.5:1 VSWR across 5 MHz of that spread.
I'm personally an Antenex fan - we have over 2000 Phantoms in use here locally and hundreds of UHF 5/8 and VHF 5/8 whips - usual failure is blunt force trauma.
Yeah Those are the ones and they do a good job with no problems to report yet.
I like the antenex as well, never had any problems with those either.
Doc:
Just out of curiosity, do you have real life SWR stats on these at points within the spec'd band, i.e. 144, 148, 150, 153, 156, 159, 162, 165, 169, 172 MHz, etc?
Re: Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 4:39 pm
by tvsjr
I bet Doc has never plugged a Sitemaster or NetTek into one of those antennas. I guarantee you won't see 38MHz on VHF or 140MHz on UHF for anything like reasonable SWR. Quarterwave VHF whips of the wideband variety (Larsen NMOWBQB) will get you 20MHz for 2:1 if you're lucky. That's about it.
Re: Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:03 pm
by Cowboy
tvsjr wrote:I bet Doc has never plugged a Sitemaster or NetTek into one of those antennas. I guarantee you won't see 38MHz on VHF or 140MHz on UHF for anything like reasonable SWR. Quarterwave VHF whips of the wideband variety (Larsen NMOWBQB) will get you 20MHz for 2:1 if you're lucky. That's about it.
Part of the reason I carried several quarterwaves precut each for 146, 151, 158, 165 and 170 MHz when working the wildland fire business - Just change the antenna for whatever the primary incident frequencies were. Going from NIFC CMD 1 to CLEMARS to ARES to local 151 MHz simplex, all in the scope of a month - just easier to change the whip than keep trying to tune the broadband quarterwave I had on the truck... They all fit rather nicely in my empty rifle rack behind the bench seat of the truck.
Re: Best Antenna
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 6:55 pm
by nmfire10
I'm a big fan of the 1/4 wave UHF.