Thanks! I'll try to remember that. In the past RACES exercise, I was
stationed in the City Health Department Conference Room, which is Downtown
and practically under the local repeater towers. This is also why I was not
TOO worried about obtaining a particularly high gain antenna, and was more
concerned with being unobtrusive. However, inside that building, the rubber
ducky antenna worked, but just barely, so I took the mobile antenna off my
Tahoe and screwed it onto my HT, using an SMA to Coax adapter. That
received much better, but was a little unwieldly, plus it puts a little more
strain on the little SMA connector than I like. This little "TV Antenna
Feed Line" J-Pole should be just the ticket for any situation like this in
the future.

"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
. net...
Chuck James wrote:
Well, I finally took the time to work on the "TV Antenna Feed Line"
J-Pole someone suggested. I got it down to less than 1.6 SWR, on 2
meter, and less than 1.2 on 70 cm, by trimming it down 1/8 inch at a
time. So now I have a VERY portable dual band antenna, I can just roll
up and stick in a small "go bag". I tried it on my Yaesu VX-6R and was
able to hit several local repeaters, some, of them even on low power.

A little trick I learned in AZ - It will work better
on 440 if you slant it toward the repeater.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com