On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 14:05:23 GMT, "Dale Parfitt"
wrote:


The advice of the full quarter wave ( just under 6') is spot on. This will
give you the maximum bandwidth and gain of any moble antenna you could use
at 40 MHz.



Whereas there's no gain involved with a 1/4 wave vertical per se
(unless referenced to a crap antenna like that on ebay), the 1/4 wave
vertical is "spot on" as Dale mentions. It'll also be resonant on
your desired reception freq. which does matter a lot with unbalanced
systems like that.

The above EBay antenna (even if it were set up for VHF Low, which it does
not appear to be) would be a real compromise in gain and BW.

Dale W4OP

Dale's spot on here as well. When you sacrifice proper antenna length
(still speaking of unbalanced verticals) with tuning networks, you're
going to get a performance hit that is often not worth the trouble or
money.


OM