Phone antennae installation

Yes it is better on the roof but the differences in real life would be minimal.

Mounting the antennas on a 20 foot pole on your roof is better again but .....

Yes it does Pepper but the installation has to be done properly.

By coincidence I have been trying to find out the best possible uhf antenna.

I actually have 3 mounted on car right now and can switch between them instantly.

The thing is that I have been unable to beat the simplest antenna of all , the short low cost 1/4 wave whip mounted in roof centre.
Even a gain antenna mounted in the same location is no better.
This occurs mainly because of the effective angle of radiation.
(gain antenna's often have gain - but if its not in the direction of the horizon then its meaningless gain)

Interesting stuff.

Some people may r ember fox hunts in the old days of the first CB radios

This is where one person hides some where in a set area and others using there radio signal strength find the first person

Ok i cheated by modifying my radio but when I became the fox i switched antenna to a magnetic base one and constantly moved it all over different locations in the car,

So on the roof people found that the strongest and few minute later I moved it onto the boot some lost the signal completely, after a while i switched back to main antenna

people did not know what I was doing but my point is the roof is the best because of ground plain lots of it ,

fun days

Still on phone antennas.

What about those antennas that look like sharks fins? The ones that are installed by the manufacturers. Would they do?

I would like to get one that has a low profile so that I don't have to drop it every time I go shopping or put the car in the garage. The phone has "blue tick" coverage and I would like to improve that coverage, not destroy it by getting a low gain "shark fin" etc one.

Any ideas? Would it be better to just get a "broom stick" on the bullbar and be done with it?

Pepper, I fitted a "broomstick" mobile phone antenna on the roof rack. It certainly improved reception in fringe conditions when my phone was connected to it.
Only trouble was that the outer tubing was soon destroyed by overhanging branches, the Troopy being so tall and all.
I rebuilt it using orange heavy-duty conduit and so far, so good.
So although you may get better performance from a roof mount you may be better off with it on the bull-bar with some small reception loss.

I have a Lumia 920 phone on an inductive cradle ( car comms ) and at xmas time we were camped at a very marginal campsite ( just enough signal to send a text msg...if you held your tongue right !! )

Took the broomstick off and mounted it 10ft up a tree and plugged it back in the cradle......no difference at all in signal strength.....

Broomstick now resides in the garage...

The inductive cradle works well as a phone charger....pity it's no good for what I bought it for !!