Influencer I
Hi there, I am new to the forum.
I was having a conversation with Txterra and thought it would be a good one too though out the Ham Radio guys in the group. He was asking me what kind of antenna I use on my Xterra. Below is the long winded response to his question and I thought it would be interesting to see what some of you are doing for your off-road antenna set up?
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For UHF/VHF I run a 1/2 wave dual band antenna. I would have to go out and take a look, but I am sure it is a Dimond. It performs great and in theory you are not as dependent on a good RF ground to get it to put out with the 1/2 wave antenna. It is hard mounted to the rear inside the rear hatch door jam. I use to just go with the Mag mount but I got tired of stopping and picking it up every time I looked at a low hanging tree.
For my APRS I use a little 1/4 wave antenna that I have sitting inside of the roof rack just behind the air dam. It works just find for APRS is packet data. You don’t need near as much to get the message though with Packet Data like this as compared to voice on FM.
For HF, I played around with tuner and a 8’ whip. I really did not have much luck with that. I have been thinking of giving this another go some day soon.
The auto tuning antennas with the worm drives seem fragile to me and for what they cost I have steered way from them. Too many moving parts to break.
I've ended up running a cheap little CB antenna whip to listen on. As long as you are not transmitting this will not hurt the radio. I use this because it can take a beating and if I break it I am not out hundreds of dollars. I then carry on my tied up to my roof rack a few HAM Stick antennas tuned the frequencies I use. Mostly 20M and 40M but I usually will also carry a 10M and 6M if I am out on an expedition. If I hear some activity I can just out and put up the right antenna for the job. I have always gotten good signal reports with this setup and have reached out to places I would never think I would be able to like Austraila, Africa, Aia, Central and Eastern Europ. But you have to keep in mind that working Mobile HF is more like working QRP in that it is a much more challenging game than it is for the guy sitting at home with the 150’ tower a big Yagi antenna and 1000s of watts behind him.
None of it is all that fancy compared to what I have seen and even tried myself. This system takes a little more hands on when switching frequency and you can not do it on the fly but if has proven it self to be very robust. In fact I have probably made compromises finding the balance between off-roading and Ham radio, but I have found this works the best for me with the fact that I spend as much time out on the trail as I can.
I was having a conversation with Txterra and thought it would be a good one too though out the Ham Radio guys in the group. He was asking me what kind of antenna I use on my Xterra. Below is the long winded response to his question and I thought it would be interesting to see what some of you are doing for your off-road antenna set up?
*******************************************************************
For UHF/VHF I run a 1/2 wave dual band antenna. I would have to go out and take a look, but I am sure it is a Dimond. It performs great and in theory you are not as dependent on a good RF ground to get it to put out with the 1/2 wave antenna. It is hard mounted to the rear inside the rear hatch door jam. I use to just go with the Mag mount but I got tired of stopping and picking it up every time I looked at a low hanging tree.
For my APRS I use a little 1/4 wave antenna that I have sitting inside of the roof rack just behind the air dam. It works just find for APRS is packet data. You don’t need near as much to get the message though with Packet Data like this as compared to voice on FM.
For HF, I played around with tuner and a 8’ whip. I really did not have much luck with that. I have been thinking of giving this another go some day soon.
The auto tuning antennas with the worm drives seem fragile to me and for what they cost I have steered way from them. Too many moving parts to break.
I've ended up running a cheap little CB antenna whip to listen on. As long as you are not transmitting this will not hurt the radio. I use this because it can take a beating and if I break it I am not out hundreds of dollars. I then carry on my tied up to my roof rack a few HAM Stick antennas tuned the frequencies I use. Mostly 20M and 40M but I usually will also carry a 10M and 6M if I am out on an expedition. If I hear some activity I can just out and put up the right antenna for the job. I have always gotten good signal reports with this setup and have reached out to places I would never think I would be able to like Austraila, Africa, Aia, Central and Eastern Europ. But you have to keep in mind that working Mobile HF is more like working QRP in that it is a much more challenging game than it is for the guy sitting at home with the 150’ tower a big Yagi antenna and 1000s of watts behind him.
None of it is all that fancy compared to what I have seen and even tried myself. This system takes a little more hands on when switching frequency and you can not do it on the fly but if has proven it self to be very robust. In fact I have probably made compromises finding the balance between off-roading and Ham radio, but I have found this works the best for me with the fact that I spend as much time out on the trail as I can.
