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Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:01 pm
by sjxts3000
Looking for examples of stealth mobile VHF antennas...low profile...not very tall, etc. Looking to cover 146-160 MHz range on the Tx. Prefer to drilling.

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 3:53 am
by tuckerm
Antenex Phantom will do it, but for TX you need to tune it within 1mhz I believe.

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 6:51 am
by RFguy
Don't have high expectations for performance. As tucker mentioned, it will have a very narrow bandwidth. 1-2 Mhz is typical.

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 7:20 pm
by FireCpt809
The phantom Elite football shape antenna has a 5 mhz spread and are non-tuneable. The old oil can ones had a 1-2mhz and had the tuning pot. Both are poor performers.

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 12:08 pm
by fineshot1
Stealth and VHF in an antenna seldom go together very well as has been said.
VHF Stealth usually requires a large compromise in performance. It never ceases
to amaze me why some people never learn this and keep asking for stealth junk!

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 7:02 pm
by BigTex1136
OK I have heard and seen the poor performance out of these oil filter antennas but out of the mix I have 1 Antenex Phantom that blows a 1/4 wave out of the water. Yes my 3db gain whip works the best but this one Antenex Phantom works very well for what it is. I was very surprised and am still very pleased with it.

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2015 10:45 am
by abbylind
D
Try Tessco they have several models

F

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2015 6:54 am
by nukedude
I bought them both at Tessco.com a few years back, the Antennex UHF Phantom antenna and VHF "soup" can style that is tunable and 1 MHz range. The VHF was a total failure, the UHF has worked very well.

For VHF I just use a small "whisker" style NMO mount antenna, Laird Technologies. Tessco sells these for only a few dollars. Not easily seen, only about a foot long and works well on VHf.

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:05 pm
by Jim202
If you get the black whips and the black nut, they are hard to see from any distance. Put it on a vehicle and it seemed to blend in. But it was an a black colored vehicle so that helped.

Jim

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2015 10:26 am
by crazyboy
Jim202 wrote:If you get the black whips and the black nut, they are hard to see from any distance. Put it on a vehicle and it seemed to blend in. But it was an a black colored vehicle so that helped.

Jim

This!! I recently swapped uhf 1/4 waves for "low profile" to test them out, and they are 20 times more noticeable.

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 8:22 am
by ve3nsv
Stico antennas work reasonably well and take the place of the factory pleasure radio antenna location.

Re: Stealth VHF mobile antenna examples

Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:08 pm
by FireCpt809
Sti-co are quite pricey...