UHF Radios/Antennas

Gday shaun

Your 6DB antenna is a good all rounder. In hilly terrain you would want a 3DB for max performance and in flat open country you would be best with a 9DB the reason is that the different antennas have different radiating patterns

Your whip antenna will have a phasing coil on it, which will change the wavelength in the second half of the aerial.

The basic rule with UHF is if you can see it you can see talk to it + some

I have a 4.5 or 6DB can’t remember, white areal and it gets ok range but gets belted around a bit when out bush.

Round here,Emerald Qld,everyone and his dog has a UHF ('cept in cars)..Most of us had the huge white 6 foot antenna on a big spring..Looked impressive..Then a rep came in here with a little black GME "POLO" on his Falcon alum 'roo bar..He got 75kms with it from Barcaldine to a station at Aramac..All the station rigs also had the big 6' white ones..The station owner ditched all the big ones,got Polo's..Cause his big antennas did'nt have that kind of reception.He picked the signal up on the homestead very high base antenna..We now use Polos on all rigs..Worked great thru the Vic High Country also..Pix http://public.fotki.com/RockyOne/!MPG:7!

Talking to people across suburbs is pretty common on channels 1 thru 8 because these can use repeaters. Theres a list of repeater locations in this site. Above chan 8 you only transmit directly to other radios so there will be much less range, but more privacy as your transmission only stays in your local area.

The duplex function on the radios basically makes them recieve on the channel you have displaying on the radio, but when you transmit it goes out 30 channels higher. Having duplex turned on will make use of the repeaters, but its only good when you are within range of them. If you have duplex turned on when there are no repeaters you will still broadcast 30 channels higher, but theres no repeater to pick up your signal and pump it out at the lower channel so you wont be able to speak with people. In this case, turn off duplex on the channel and you're sweet.

If you are talking about different types of antennas on the one 4x4 then I have a few.

3-4ft fibreglass 4.5db interchangeable with a 2ftish stainless steel 6db.
3ft fibreglass digital phone antenna
3ft whip am/fm antenna
Little box GPS antenna
Plus a 3ft or so 27mhz. The base is still there for it but I haven't fitted it in quite a while.

Big aerials on bullbars is a testosterone thing :-)

A small rubber stubbie aerial on the roof is as good as any big fat bullbar mounted aerial, and they never break.

The higher the UHF aerial, the better.

Cheers
Phil

We're in the middle of getting our rig set up and are having several antennas added for various bits of kit - UHF radio, CDMA phone, Sat phone as to how they work forget it I haven't got a clue :o)

Sasha (Mrs Homeboy)