Antennas?

My opinion 7 a few facts on antennas.....

1. One is enough

2. 4 ft antennas are not that good

3. Get the tallest you can, and I prefer a whip style antenna like a Wilson 2000

4. Get the antenna up as high as you possibly can for best results

 

I get 10-12 miles out of my wilson2k and barefoot 3400hp

 

+1 to Turbo.Bear in mind that coils do not radiate, nor receive. They merely make the radio happy. Everything else being equal, greater whip length will yield greater transmitted field strength and receive sensitivity as long as the antenna is resonant.Think of the antenna as a sail on a sailboat. When it's completely unfurled it catches the most wind. If you haul down part of it and lash it to the boom, it sees less wind, but the weight of the unexposed sail is still a load on the boat's propulsion -- lower efficiency for the same weight. The parallel isn't precise, but it should impart the idea. Hope it helps. 73

 

Philjo, where is your antenna mounted and what kind of truck?

Handlebar, what if the swr meter shows the antenna is electrically long?

 

Most of the antennas can be trimmed,even the fiberglass like the Firestick.Pull the rubber cap off and you can see the metal wire wrapped around.Trim 1/4 inch at a time.

 

Yup, what EZ said. Since you can't really change the coil's value easily, the way to change the resonant frequency of the antenna is to vary the whip's length. Higher frequency = shorter wavelength. If you had an antenna made for 10 MHz, though, with a big coil, you probably wouldn't be able to shorten the whip enough to work at 27 MHz, as there has to be *some* whip left to work as a radiator.
The easy answer is, if the antenna is tuned to a lower frequency than you need, shorten the whip to make the assembly resonant on a higher frequency.

 

The reason for the coils or the can on antennas is so that you are not smacking every over pass or bridge or taking out birds and low flying aircraft as you go down the road. The taller antennas can be a huge issue for some drivers depending on their jobs. The hopper bottom guys are always running in areas with low height. They are alway gettign their antennas caught up in grain elevators or catwalks etc when they are loading and unloading. Guys that do alot of town running have issues with trees etc. I don't know why and can't explain it but there are some open coil antennas that just plain work better then any other antenna out there. Granted, they are not a 102 whip and a 6 inch spring but they do work and work well.

I would stick with the single setup but think about a longer style antenna, maybe go to the 5 or 5.5 foot fibeglass style if that is what you like. The difference between the 4 footers and the 5+ footers is just that they are not as tightly wrapped so they can be physically longer. The 4 footers are wrapped tighter so they can be shorter. The antenna wire is actually the same length between them.

 

What effect does tethering a 102 whip (like I see on military vehicles) have on performance?

 

It will affect the pattern a bit, but no real issues as long as you don't short the antenna to the body.