Roy Lewallen wrote:
Tom Horne wrote:

Roy
For the sake of my continuing education what would I need in terms of
minimum equipment to make a meaningful comparison between antennas?
Just to keep it simple I'm working on two meters and seventy five
centimeters so far in my EMCOM prep work.

That's a tall order. What characteristics of the antennas are meaningful
to you? Gain in some particular direction and elevation angle, minimum
gain at any azimuth at some elevation angle, pattern circularity,
mechanical ruggedness, corrosion resistance, portability, size, weight,
SWR at some specific frequency or over some particular band, efficiency?
Does it have to have some characteristic(s) when mounted on some
particular vehicle? Some point on some vehicle? Some class of vehicles?

What sort of accuracy would make the results meaningful?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy
I apologize for being so cryptic. I'm interested in determining the
efficiency of the antenna in projecting the available power out to local
horizon in all directions. I'd rather not have to aim the vehicle in
order to raise a distant station or repeater. I bought the highest gain
vertical I could afford which is a Comet SBB-7. It is supposed to have
a gain of 4.5 dbi. It is mounted on a lip mount on the back left door
of the Chevy Express 1500 that I use for bread work and radio public
service work. I'd like to know whether it is worth deploying a
collinear J-pole on the roof of the van when I'm stationary. Is the
mobile antenna doing it's job well enough that there is not enough to be
gained? The things I'd like to be able to test are is the power
actually getting to the antenna, which antenna puts out the strongest
horizontal, or nearly so, circle and so forth.
--
Tom Horne, W3TDH