[aprssig] Antenna recommendation

[Chuck Kimball]

I know some folks will disagree, but I've been having really good luck running simple 1/4 wave antennas from arrow.  
<http://www.arrowantennas.com/gp146.html>
$30, and built well, and holds up well.  I've got several on mountain tops in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah.  
I've even got one up on one of my towers here in Antarctica.  Survived it's first winter w/ 70 knot winds and ice without damage. 

So far the oldest is out it's third winter, worst damage I've seen has been a broken ground plane element.   That site is still talking over a hundred miles at times.  The quarter wave works well for not shooting over the tops of the local users down in the canyons.  Most of the sites are anywhere from 700 to 4000 feet HAAT.   

Other nice thing is that it doesn't require a lot of vertical real estate on the tower - only about 2' 

Depends a lot on your terrain, but a lot of times gain doesn't always add to your system.  
On the flip side, if I was setting things up over on the plains with high towers, I'd be trying to squeeze lots of gain out of my antennas.  

I don't expect them to last as long as a good commercial (DB products, etc) style antenna, but for the money they seem to work well. 

YMMV
Chuck   n0nhj


----- Original Message ----
From: Stephen Brown Jr <stephen.brown75 at gmail.com>
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List <aprssig at lists.tapr.org>
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 3:39:45 PM
Subject: [aprssig] Antenna recommendation

Digi owners, can you recommend a decent antenna that is inexpensive (<=$100) for an APRS digipeater? I just installed a remote WX station and he currently has a yagi on it pointing back to me and I have offered to change it out with something omni-directional to enable digipeater functions. I am seriously considering a Cushcraft Ringo Ranger, the site is located at about 1900ft here in the mountains of East TN and the antenna will be at the 50ft mark on the tower. 


We will also be putting a packet node on 145.010 there as well and want to use the same type of antenna for both, would the Ringo Ranger be a good choice? 

Stephen 
N1VLV


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