I have a (Diamond) Discone 35 feet above ground, fed with reasonable quality
coax. My radio can run 5 /25 /50 watts.
Simplex to 35 miles base to base is easy if the other guy has elevation.
I routinely work amatuer repeaters on 145 and listen to commercial
repeaters on 450 that are 40 miles by air from here and they are full scale.
I have worked mobiles 25 miles away. The verticle pattern has nulls in it
(so does a ground plane) so when the ISS passes overhead I may lose a few
words as they go through a null.
Stainless steel is a terrible thing to use for an antenna due to eddy
current losses and lower condutivity than copper. The only way to avoid
that is with an aluminum, or copper and fiberglass antenna.
Mine is stainless steel and has been up several years. I have no intention
of changing it!
KA9CAR
"VHFRadioBuff" wrote in message
...
Greetings all!...will a uhf/vhf discone antenna work with my Kenwood
TW-4000A? any hints/suggestions/recommendations greatly appreciated!
thank you for your time......73's....tony...wa9yoz
I tried one, then took it down and bought a nice dualband vertical. If you
have
limited space and only need to work local stuff, I suppose the discone
would
work.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
73! de Andy KC2SSB - WPYI880 (GMRS)
Beachwood, NJ USA! Grid FM29vw
http://vhfradiobuff.tripod.com