Looking for simple antenna solution
 

After years off the air, I'm ready to get back on. I want to keep it simple
though. I picked up a 6m/2m/440 Yaesu VX-7 HT at Dayton and I plan to use it
for both base and mobile. I want an antenna that covers these 3 bands that I
can mount off the side of my 80 ft. tower. (Off the side, because there is
no way I can climb to the top anymore!) I'm not concerned with the gain, I
just want something better than the rubber duck. Any product and mounting
recommendations?

--
Bob D. ND9B

Looking for simple antenna solution
 

"Bob D." wrote in message
...
After years off the air, I'm ready to get back on. I want to keep it
simple though. I picked up a 6m/2m/440 Yaesu VX-7 HT at Dayton and I plan
to use it for both base and mobile. I want an antenna that covers these 3
bands that I can mount off the side of my 80 ft. tower. (Off the side,
because there is no way I can climb to the top anymore!) I'm not concerned
with the gain, I just want something better than the rubber duck. Any
product and mounting recommendations?

--
Bob D. ND9B


Find someone who can climb for you. There is usually a willing young ham
glad to do this sort of thing.

Looking for simple antenna solution
 

In article ,
"Jimmie D" wrote:

"Bob D." wrote in message
...
After years off the air, I'm ready to get back on. I want to keep it
simple though. I picked up a 6m/2m/440 Yaesu VX-7 HT at Dayton and I plan
to use it for both base and mobile. I want an antenna that covers these 3
bands that I can mount off the side of my 80 ft. tower. (Off the side,
because there is no way I can climb to the top anymore!) I'm not concerned
with the gain, I just want something better than the rubber duck. Any
product and mounting recommendations?

--
Bob D. ND9B
Hi
best of luck w/your new ht, thou not as specific as your prob looking
for i can tell you there are a few tri band even quad badd as your ht i
believe puts out a bit on 220 same goes for root they do make some
small simple verticles

any large store like hro can help or you can prob find browsing on the
net or qst

be well

Looking for simple antenna solution
 

"Bob D." wrote in message ...
After years off the air, I'm ready to get back on. I want to keep it
simple though. I picked up a 6m/2m/440 Yaesu VX-7 HT at Dayton and I plan
to use it for both base and mobile.

This is a reasonable starting place, but you're likely to find that a
multiband HT has a couple of limitations which make it less than ideal
for use in base and mobile applications.

For one: HTs tend to have broadly-tuned front ends, optimized for fairly
low incoming-signal levels. This is what's needed to provide
wide-range multiband operation with a rubber dummy-load antenna.
Unfortunately, as a result, many HTs are very prone to strong-signal
overload and intermod, especially when hooked to a good antenna. If
you hook an HT to a halfwave dipole or full-length quarterwave whip on
a good ground plane, you may find it being "blasted open" by pager
signals and other strong local transmissions. This can be a real
limitation for base-station operation, and sometimes requires the use
of a narrowband notch filter to reject the pager or other strong
out-of-band signals.

In mobile operations, the lack of a separate squelch control can be a
problem on some HTs. Desired-signal and interference levels can vary
quite a lot as you drive along, and it's no fun at all (and not very
safe) to have to try to hit an HT's buttons to bring up a
squelch-setting menu while driving.

An HT is usable in both base and mobile situations, but if you find
yourself using it a lot you may also find yourself wanting a rig with
a more robust front-end. A small mobile radio could serve that
purpose in both mobile and base applications.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Looking for simple antenna solution
 

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 11:05:29 -0500, "Bob D."
wrote:

After years off the air, I'm ready to get back on. I want to keep it simple
though. I picked up a 6m/2m/440 Yaesu VX-7 HT at Dayton and I plan to use it
for both base and mobile. I want an antenna that covers these 3 bands that I
can mount off the side of my 80 ft. tower. (Off the side, because there is
no way I can climb to the top anymore!) I'm not concerned with the gain, I
just want something better than the rubber duck. Any product and mounting
recommendations?

Bearing in mind that most HTs suffer from IM (probably due to lack
front end selectivity), you might want to avoid wideband antennas such
as discones. Even on relatively narrow antennas, you may still
experience nuisance mute opening if you do not use CTCSS on monitored
channels.

Owen
--