what antenna should i get

Nah it simply means you take a larger sampling and observe the results

You are taking the easy way out by requiring parameters that cannot and will not ever exist. How convenient

 

A claim was made that one antenna was better than another antenna without mentioning any of the variables. As you are aware, there are lots of variables to how a radio performs. If one guy has a Chevy suburban with a 10 inch antenna on his roof and talks 6 miles, and another guy has a motorcycle with a 9 foot whip on the handlebar and talks 2 miles, is the 10 inch antenna better?

 

Without those variables, the data is useless. Like I said, If one guy has a Chevy suburban with a 10 inch antenna on his roof and talks 6 miles, and another guy has a motorcycle with a 9 foot whip on the handlebar and talks 2 miles, is the 10 inch antenna better?
Without mentioning the variables (vehicles involved) and only mentioning the antennas, the results can be misleading.

 

Only useful to people in the real world. The conditions you want are not ever going to happen. Ever.

Therefore, out here in reality, if I see a particular setup win 49 out of 50 times, I will consider it a good enough setup to declare a winner. It would make me batchit crazy worrying about such minutia. There are simply not enough hours in the day

I do however support your right to chase an imaginary scenario that will never happen except on a very small scale.

 

It was Ray in W. Memphis. He has been in it long enough and his reputation is such that even though I wasn't there, I believe him. No reason for him to make it up. The Skip Shooter was made in the Memphis area back when he was doing that stuff.

 

Good analogy. I'm sure in those key down contests, everything was pretty much the same for everybody, except equipment. Ray explained to me the technicalities of it all, but I don't remember all he said. I do remember him saying he had a bunch of them baffled as to how he was kicking their butt with them using the time tested steel whip. He gave credit to his 7ft Skip Shooter.

 

I bought my 6 foot skipshooter, 18 feet of coax (that will cause an uproar amongst the coax length debate crowd) and my Wilson mirror mount from Ray a few months ago. Since I am leaving out a little late, I will be able to talk to some folks 60+ miles on it. I also have a Silver Eagle 350 Ray’s former associate built that I let my brother in law use in Kentucky. It works well.

Ray has worked on my dad’s stuff since he was in Southaven. He is one of few folks I give business to.

 

With respect to the keydown, the 10 inch antenna is better since it transmitted further (contingent the base they are talking to is less than 7 miles away). It would never be that close in relation on a keydown though.

 

I totally agree with you about his honesty. The only problem is if we want to solve a mathematical equation we need all the numbers and if we only have one of the numbers we cannot solve the equation. That's the only point I was making. It's okay to have a religious belief in something but we need to recognize it for what it is without having the rest of the numbers to solve the equation. I'm just looking at it from a purely scientific perspective and if someone tries to convince me one antenna is always better without mentioning what types of vehicles they are attached to I would be unable to accept it at face value without knowing all the variables if it contradicts known physics. I agree the skip shooter is a great antenna but I also have to recognize the coil losses in the antenna which are not present in the 9-foot whip.

 

That's just it though it wasn't the antenna doing the work.
It was the sheet metal roof of the vehicle that made it possible.
The amount of sheet metal directly underneath the antenna is directly proportional to the performance you get from that antenna. That's precisely why the amount of sheet metal has to be factored into the equation if you're comparing two vehicles to each other.
The antenna never gets all the credit.
The vehicle is a large percentage of the equation and how you attach the antenna to the vehicle is another large percentage of the equation.
Without mentioning these things it's impossible to make a comparison when using two different antennas.
30 years ago I had a 16 in rubber ducky antenna on the roof of my car and I talked 10 miles with four Watts but that doesn't mean that 16in antenna was a good antenna. The only reason I was able to do it was because I drilled a hole in the middle of my roof and I had sheet metal underneath that antenna.