Batboard

Has anyone had any experience with a "bumber antenna" or a "licence plate" antenna......VHF range? The reason I am asking is that I just installed one (made by US communications) (against my wishes!) and It is lucky to talk a couple of blocks!

Just wondering if anyone has had experience with one.....Thanks!

I have tested the lic. plate antenna and found it was (VHF) -22.3 db and (UHF) -19.43 db, (800) -17.84 db over 1/4 wave in the top of the vehicle, I can see them usefull for close in survel, or on a real good repeater system for time to time use but as a normal antenna forget it.

I have never tested a bumper antenna, but I am sure it would be similar.

I would suggest using the COMPROD (from Canada) disguise antenna, which is much superior to the Sti-CO antenna's. I would also look at for close in work just finding a place to reverse mount an NMO under the vehicle.

In the past I have developed for some 3 letter fed agencies antenna's that were bonded to the inner panels of Lotus, Aston Martin, Mazarati and Farrari's that they wanted as total stelth but it was still backed up to a Syntor radio. The bonding was plates of brass that was cut to be 50 ohms on the specific frequencies and these were bonded to the fiberglass or plastic panels of the vehicles. It was not for full time use but for trailing vehicles that were working simplex withing a pecific operation with seized vehicles.

Our department (the investigators vehicles) uses bumper antennas with a splitter on VHF and 800. Range is substantially limited and almost unusable beyond five miles out of town. I would never recommend them for installation again. I told them before they were installed that they wouldn't be happy and they are not.

Several years a friend and I tried sticking UHF NMO mounts upside down underneath our cars. Results were plain lousy. The govt agencies in the DC area have been observed using them but we suspect, after our negative experience, that they're for use in motorcades and not much more. Then, too, there is a LOT of strange RF comms stuff that goes on around here, especially on 800/900 mHz, with really strange repeater sites, so what do I know?

Do a search from a few months ago when I posted about using the Antenex Phantom's internal board inside of the side mirrors. It actually worked very well!