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NEW: Mobile Antenna Testing Results Part 1

Updates:

Oct 2004: finishing up the mobile antenna shootout

July 2004: Added antenna testing and more photos

June 2004:
Laptop crash so I decided to completely redo the site..

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Ok! Which one did I end up using?

The one that ended up is the Predator: KJ7U: it has great frequency coverage and works reliably. I was annoyed at the twisting, but I fixed it.. But I cheated.. I used the High Sierra mount as part of the solution. So which would I recommend: the HS1800... I should have done more testing with it! (Gone back to 40M settings at 6M) I am sure I could have played with the grounds to get better performance from it.. The Tarheel simply did not take the punishment of road travel. The problem is that HS is the most expensive of them all.. is it worth it? That I will leave up to you!

I have talked to alot of people using these antennas over all sorts of conditions in even more configurations reported here (top hat configurations, body grounding, ununs on feedline, etc) Was all this work worth the effort: ABSOLUTELY! The truck is not “arm chair” copy simply because it is not a luxury vehicle .. its a truck! but what fun talking to net control of ECARS in the morning and spain in the evening! Wow cool!

but that is only part of the story!

The antenna is only part of the problem: you need to move it to the right position to use it.. To do this you need a controller... I understand HS now sells one and there are new ones being introduced everyday. My own experience...

Oh and what about the Top Hat?

Did the top hat make a difference? The point of the top hat is to reduce the coil length to lower the coil resistance. To compensate for this some capacitance is needed and add the top hat (I use one by DX Engineering) Yes the effect was dramatic! on 40M my counter dropped from 165 to 91, significantly less coil. Of course the tuning is much tighter between frequencies but also QSY takes alot less time. As the frequency increases, since you are already using less coil the effect of the top hat drops off..

The Future??

What is next?

• 500W amplifier: I dont think so! I dont want to strain hearing people in the truck and I dont think I need to increase the power to get more distant stations?
• 160M? I actually have no interest in 160M from the vehicle. I find 40M for causal conversation, some 20/15/10 for DX and just to have fun on 6 is more than enough.
• APRS? Another story! I actually jury rigged this into the vehicle but after I got it all to work, the thrill was gone! Maybe I will do it in the future
• Satellite: ok.. humm now that is interesting Satellite operation from a moving vehicle... interesting challenge (fun thought experiment, but I think a bit too much work technically and distracting in the car: remember safety first!)
• Control SW: I will most probably beef up my home brew controller adding some features. I like the trackball controller ALOT (left right is frequency and up/down is menu changes) I think I will be playing with this for a while..

Hope to be in contact! 73’s, WB2EWB

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Copyright 2004 by Philip P. Thompson, All rights reserved.