Station antennas

Mobile(vehicle) antennas

Hand-held (portable) antennas

Line, terminations and cavities

Engineering, grounding and other projects and notes

The commercial rated antennas are best for harsh weather conditions, especially for winter. While the fiberglass radome type is the best for that the open loop types are good too so, should be considered for your installation that is not at a high site prone to icing loading. However, you need to be aware that some of these open loops will work well in the amateur band. For example, here shows an excellent return loss figure for the VHF-Hi Band (Commercial) range, but just barely clears the accepted "standard" in the amateur band. This sweep/plot shows that some of the open loop types are not broad banded as previously thought. Therefore, it's best to do you homework before ordering such an expensive antenna. Incidentally, all antennas at high site subject to wild winter conditions should be supported on the bottom and top.

When installing line and antenna it's important to properly seal the connections. The line termination is to be lightly "snug" when connecting to the antenna. This can be done with plyers; just be careful not to overtighen. Normally, mastic pad (AKA "butyl") is used followed by a good quality electrical tape; two layers if using the typical 3/4" tape. The Author sometimes uses what's available which would be Scotch "700", "33" or "88". The latter is the first choice because it works well enough in cold weather. Some times at the MCP/home the Author will use only a single layer of tape as an experiment. Shown here is two adaptors removed from service after being on the tower for a decade-all appears to still be clean.

Here's some example of sealing materials you can purchase:

In the event the Author made a "typo" or otherwise, unclear documentation a notification would be appreciated.