In article ,
"Dale" wrote:

I was going to say this as a response to someone else's post but
didn't want to hijack their thread. So... Can anyone tell me why you
would ever use a factory supplied whip antenna over an external wire
or other external antenna?

The factory supplied whip antennas are to me a sad excuse for a real
antenna but I guess the manufacturers have to put some sort of an
antenna on the radio so it will work and they can call it a portable.
Did I just answer my own question? I really get a kick out of someone
saying some radios don't perform well off of the whip. Who cares?
Someone please enlighten me. When would you ever use a supplied whip
over an external wire or other antenna? Even in a hotel room or on a
camping trip you could use an external wire antenna. Light guage wire
of any reasonable length takes up very little room and most decent
radios usually have an external antenna jack. You can also look at
the higher end radios as well as ultra high end radios and none of
them come with a whip antenna.

I don't want this to become heated but I really am curious under what
circumstances some of you would use a whip antenna (FM excluded). I'm
certain that I must be missing something really obvious here. Thanks
in advance....

Well, whenever the signal is strong enough for good reception on the
whip I would not bother to put the wire up. The whip works good enough
for strong signals.

I have a roll up wire from radio shack that I made a plug for the
antenna jack. I roll that out for weak signals.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California