Add a counterpoise
Many of you are frustrated by poor TX and RX and are having difficulty reaching the SARC repeater. Here's a few easy and inexpensive tips that I'm sure will help:
Use that roll-up J-pole that you built in the antenna workshop. It actually has gain!
Replace your rubber ducky antenna with the antenna you built in the Basic course Antenna Workshop, or a 2m ¼-wave or 5/8-wave whip antenna. The ¼-wave is much longer than the factory ducky and should give measurably better performance - up to 5x the power.
The 5/8-whip should in theory perform better than the shorter ¼-wave because it's longer, and it ‘flattens’ the radiation pattern thereby radiating power where it is most useful, out to the sides, instead of up. However, as John VE7TI pointed out to me, he's not sure that he's seen any effective 5/8-wave antennas for 2m handhelds because if properly sized they would be well over a metre and therefore quite long. See https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/8009022.pdf (our prolific tech contributor Daniel VE7LCG says that the 92cm collapsible RH-770 dual-band on Aliexpress C$11 does work and is available in SMA-M, SMA-F and BNC).
I added a ¼-wave to my Yaesu FT-60 and was very pleased with the results. Neither of these antennas are expensive and well worth the investment.
Now, adding a counterpoise (a.k.a. tiger tail) to your rig can take your signal to a whole new level. Without a counterpoise your HT antenna lacks a ground plane, effectively becoming a monopole. By adding a counterpoise you effectively turn your whip or ¼-wave into a dipole. That's usually a very good thing. By connecting a ¼-wave wire to your antenna connector outer terminal we create a physical counterpoise instead of the indirect ground plane created by your body. Simply unscrew the antenna, slip the tiger tail over the connector and re-attach the antenna. Voila! Better signal! I encourage you to google these ideas or ask our Elmers for further explanation at elmers@ve7sar.net.
One additional consideration… Many inexpensive Chinese transceivers (yes, the Baofeng UV-5 included) have a front end that is inexpensively made and lacks proper filtering. As a result, adding a better antenna may actually compound your ability to receive a station. Why? The amount of signal entering the front end of the radio floods the circuitry with signal resulting in it being unable to pick the wanted station from all that other RF. It is so strong that a circuit in the receiver is unable to process the signal as intended. This is usually in a mixer, an RF amplifier or a filter stage. Check out this YouTube video for an example.
So consider adding a ¼-wave antenna and a counterpoise to your handheld. You won't be disappointed.
My counterpoise is shown above.
73,
~ Larry Bloom VE7LXB
Surrey Amateur Radio Communications
Other quick antenna solutions are in The Communicator: Jan-Feb ‘23 Pg 34-35, Jul-Aug ‘22 Pg 50-51 and 46-49, and March 2018 editions.
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