I have had an antenna I bought from RS years ago. I bought it for a Pro-79.
I some times had trouble picking up the County calls where I work. The new
one is several inches longer, and "claimed" to be great for this. It turned
out it did nothing, and got relegated to the junk drawer. Well now that the
city is switching over to an 800 trunked system I went to a 95 I had bought
a couple years ago. The antenna can be a pain at times when carrying the
thing so I decided to see if shortening it would hurt anything on the 800
band. I noticed for years now GMRS radios come with very short antenna's and
work great. So anyway I started lopping off an inch at a time, and now it's
down to 4 inches, much easier to carry, and I can't tell any difference in
either the 800 or the 400 band reception. I know nothing about how this
works. Is the longer antenna supposed to work better with other bands or
something? I would like to lop off a little more if it has no ill effect. I
guess I will see if I can pick up an old scanner that does not work on E-bay
that has a BNC connector to play with and see just how short I can go.
Anyway what's the point in the longer antenna?
Thanks