"Bob Dixon" wrote in message
...
Adding any adaptor would seem to significantly move the radiating
portion of the antenna further away from the "ground plane" of the radio.
This should affect the operation of the antenna adversely. Comments?

What makes you think the effect should be adverse? When you consider all
the different radios that a given antenna could be connected to, the change
from radio to radio is going to be far greater than what a 3/8" adapter is
going to do (consider its electrical length at 2m...). In fact, I would
hope that most HT antennas weren't meant to be used with counterpoises, but
now that I think about it, I don't really know whether or not that's the
case. Anyone?

I mean... the radiation pattern of a wire cut 'to length' stuck into a BNC
connector on the top of an HT is going to be very seriously distorted
relative to the same wire above a near-infinite ground plane.

Cell phones often use sleeve dispole antennas to avoid the need for a
counterpoise...

---Joel