Tom Ring wrote:

Which means it was a colinear. It is long for a reason.

Similar antennas are vailable at CompoUSA and most other computer stores.

tom
K0TAR

What you should look for is small plasic-encased bumps (each enclosing a
coil) or obvious coiled sections spaced every few inches along the
antenna's length. If it has those, it's probably a collinear like Tom
says, and will be omnidirectional broadside to the antenna. If it
doesn't, and is just a straight piece of wire or rod, it's directional
nearly in the direction of the wire like Richard said.

Any reasonable sized coax will have a lot of loss per unit length at
that frequency, so do everything you can to keep it as short as
possible. Depending on the situation, putting the antenna might or might
not help, if putting it higher necessitates making the feedline longer.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy Lewallen wrote:

What you should look for is small plasic-encased bumps (each enclosing a
coil) or obvious coiled sections spaced every few inches along the
antenna's length. If it has those, it's probably a collinear like Tom
says, and will be omnidirectional broadside to the antenna. If it
doesn't, and is just a straight piece of wire or rod, it's directional
nearly in the direction of the wire like Richard said.


You won't see that on these colinears, the radome surrounding them
covers it up. I am thinking they may be the coax style colinears, which
would not have the coils.

tom
K0TAR

Tom Ring wrote:
Roy Lewallen wrote:

What you should look for is small plasic-encased bumps (each enclosing
a coil) or obvious coiled sections spaced every few inches along the
antenna's length. If it has those, it's probably a collinear like Tom
says, and will be omnidirectional broadside to the antenna. If it
doesn't, and is just a straight piece of wire or rod, it's directional
nearly in the direction of the wire like Richard said.


You won't see that on these colinears, the radome surrounding them
covers it up. I am thinking they may be the coax style colinears, which
would not have the coils.

tom
K0TAR

Ah, good points. I hadn't considered either a coaxial (Franklin)
collinear or a radome. In that case, I can't think of an easy way to
tell except by pointing the antenna in the direction of a known signal
and seeing if it gets better (not a collinear) or worse (collinear).
Unless, of course, the manufacturer and model number are known or visible.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy Lewallen wrote:

Ah, good points. I hadn't considered either a coaxial (Franklin)
collinear or a radome. In that case, I can't think of an easy way to

And why does the world spell colinear collinear? It's not col-linear
it's co-linear. Makes no sense to me.

tom
K0TAR

Tom Ring wrote:

Roy Lewallen wrote:

Ah, good points. I hadn't considered either a coaxial (Franklin)
collinear or a radome. In that case, I can't think of an easy way to


And why does the world spell colinear collinear? It's not col-linear
it's co-linear. Makes no sense to me.


For instance, we don't say colaxial cable.

tom
K0TAR

Tom Ring wrote:

And why does the world spell colinear collinear? It's not col-linear
it's co-linear. Makes no sense to me.

tom
K0TAR

C'mon now, since when was English logical, in spelling, punctuation,
grammer, or usage? You can't be too hard on a language in which slim
chance and fat chance mean the same thing, and wise man and wise guy are
nearly opposites.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL
-- often rightly accused of being one of the latter of the latter