by G4RMT » Mon Oct 12, 2020 7:44 am
The most effective wide and antenna I've ever had is a jaybeam discone, but it has sat on the ground for five yea now because it's just so impractical up in the air. I've got a small j pole for UHF, a single band UHF 4.5dBd vertical for 453 and a white stick dual band, probably a 30 of some brand or other. On an analyser the discone is a spikey mess. Lots of spikes where it is more resonant and lots of dips that are not too bad vswr wise. It does however do a good job absolutely everywhere between 70 and 500mhz and it's actually got some performance in the 600mhz band. The white stick has sensible matches in the two ham bands but in between them it's a bit of metal in the sky. I have commercial kit here. The vswr on 453 is workable, about 2:1 but on the repeater it's absolutely rubbish. The jpole is a tiny little thing and on transmit it's damn good. So many antennas now seem to be designed with vswr as the critical feature, NOT for actually getting RF in or out.