View Single Post
  #15  
Old 06-26-2017, 07:52 PM
Jeffhs's Avatar
Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
<----Zenith C845
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
Posts: 4,035
Quote:
Originally Posted by davet753 View Post
For less than $30, you can buy a J-pole antenna that works well on 2 meters and 440. If you're feeling industrious, you can find all sorts of plans on the internet for building your own out of stainless steel (they are easy to do). You can also use a piece of 300 ohm television twin-lead to make your own (a quick google search will show up several plans). With a Baofeng and a J-pole somewhere outside, you should be able to hit some local repeaters. I have one on the roof, and with my Yaesu FTM-400DR I can reliably use repeaters 60 miles away full quieting.

If you want a better rubber duck antenna for portable use with a Baofeng, the Nagoya NA771 from Amazon is $15 and will perform much better than the short, factory antenna.
I purchased the Nagoya NA771 antenna shortly after I received my UV5R. The Nagoya whip certainly is better than the stock antenna on 2 meters, and also works great for FM broadcast reception. I haven't tried the NA771 on UHF, however, since there are few such repeaters in this area; besides, I think the NA771 is far too long for that band and even for 2 meters. What were they (Nagoya) thinking when they designed this antenna? It might be long enough (and then some) for FM broadcast, but I would and do wonder about 2m; after all, a quarter wavelength at 144 MHz is somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 inches. I have a difficult time figuring out how the 3/8-wave telescoping antenna I'm using with my Icom HT works as well as it does, as that antenna is far longer than 19 inches when fully extended.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the stock antenna that comes with the UV5R isn't much good unless you are almost literally within spitting distance of a local repeater, and it doesn't work worth a hill of beans on FM broadcast unless you are in a very strong signal area. That lets me out, since I live about 1.5 to 2 miles from the so-called "local" machine in the next town south of here, and am about 45 miles (!) from most FM radio stations serving Cleveland.

I cannot seem to hit the local repeater with my UV5R, although I can with my 1.5-watt Icom IC-T22A. There are some settings on my UV5R HT which I know aren't right yet, such as the transmit offset (currently set at 0.000 [simplex] rather than 0.600, IIRC) and the CTCSS tone, which is presently set to off. The HT's transmitter appears to be working, however, as I have tried it on 146.52 simplex and can hear myself in the Icom HT as nicely as you please. Therefore, the problem with transmitting to and hitting repeaters with the UV-5R must be caused by one of two things: that I don't have the CTCSS (PL) tone set properly, that the transmit offset is incorrect, or possibly both settings are set to 0 or off. The programming procedure for this HT isn't exactly straightforward (far from it, in fact), so I must be missing or skipping a step or two somewhere.
__________________
Jeff, WB8NHV

Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.
Reply With Quote
Audiokarma