{"id":1390,"date":"2012-01-16T17:12:27","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T01:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/k7nvh.com\/wordpress\/?p=110"},"modified":"2012-01-16T17:12:27","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T01:12:27","slug":"handheld-rubber-duck-antennas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/?p=1390","title":{"rendered":"Handheld Rubber Duck Antennas"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently purchased a new FT-60R dual band handheld from Yaesu, as the handheld I had already (a VX-150) was only a single band. Seeing as I do a fair amount of stuff up in the 70cm band, it would be useful to have a handheld that could do so as well.<\/p>\n

After receiving my new handheld, it seemed like I wasn’t receiving as well as I felt like I aught to be. So, I decided to run a test, to see what the loss is, when going from the single band rubber duck antenna on my VX-150 to the dual band rubber duck on my new FT-60R.<\/p>\n

Here’s the picture of both radios with their associated antennas, and tuned to one of the local NOAA weather radio channels. My VX-150 is on the left, and the FT-60R is on the right. Note that the VX-150 is showing six bars on the S Meter and the FT-60R is only showing three.<\/p>\n

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Now, one could say with just this test having been done that perhaps the VX-150 is just more sensitive, or the FT-60R is a little deaf in that frequency range. But we’ll swap the antennas to take the sensitivity (or not) of the radios out of the equation.<\/p>\n

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Now note that using the dual band antenna on the VX-150 results on only three bars, and the FT-60 now has six.<\/p>\n

So, now we’ve come down to the truth of the matter, that the stock antenna that comes with the FT-60R is rather poor, even by rubber duck standards, when compared to the single band equivalent despite being physically longer. Since I don’t have a 70cm handheld and matching rubber duck, I can’t compare it there.<\/p>\n

Which leads me to the conclusion that if I want to be able to receive very well, or get out at all, I should invest in a longer aftermarket dual band rubber duck antenna. Hopefully that will give me enough gain to at minimum match the performance of the single band antenna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently purchased a new FT-60R dual band handheld from Yaesu, as the handheld I had already (a VX-150) was only a single band. Seeing as I do a fair amount of stuff up in the 70cm band, it would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}