Batboard

A buddy of mine recently bought himself a dual band vertex mobile radio, and has finally got around to putting it into his truck...the trick is he needs and antenna that will cover from 144-165...he is a ham and a member of our fire dept...is there an antenna out there that will cover this much bandwidth and not kill the radio on the SWR end?? If there is a creature, who makes/sells it...if not anyone have a good suggestion on how to hook things up without blowing too much more money. TIA.

There are some available broadband quarter wave antennas. The Maxrad MWB1320 is tunable and claims a 24MHz bandwidth.

The Antennex B1325 and the Antenna Specialists ASP7495 are similar.

A 1/4 wave is fairly broadband anyway and these antennas have a spring base which lowers the "Q" which widens the bandwidth.

Even a regular 1/4 wave cut for around 150 will work fairly well from 144-156.

Actually the Antenex model number is B132S (a letter) just to make it easier for you to find

Not only do they have a spring base but the "coil" looking thing at the bottom is actually a thick copper tube that further broadens the bandwidth.

Around here due to the variation of frequencies we use them from 150 (used to be 148) all the way to 173 MC. But then again we also use 5/8 waves, regular 1/4 waves, and various unidentified things. I am sure some radios are operating into fairly high SWRs at certain freqs

Birken

Why is he using an amateur radio for public safety? I don't usually participate in " xxx police" threads, but in the case of type acceptance threads, I will.

I won't preach to the chior, but I hope there are no ill effects or lives lost by your buddy's decision to use a non-type accepted radio.

No where in there did he say that the radio was a ham radio. Vertex is a commercial radio brand. And programming ham freqs into a commercial radio in addition to public safetey freqs is perfectly legal.

Rest assured that this IS an FCC type accepted radio, I verified this today, but seeing as how our radio system is run backwards anyway ham radios might prove more reliable than the crap sitting in our comm center. And seeing how he only provides fireground support and is on the board of directors type acceptance isnt going to cause too much trouble anyways. Heck I have to call dispatch on the cell phone sometimes to get them to answer me as they love to turn fire and ems volume down and all listen to the pd on their fancy new p25 digital 800 radio...seems they like what goes on in other counties better than what goes on in our own...

Um, board of directors or not, if he gets busted, the entire department is going to be in trouble. You say the radio IS FCC type-accepted... then say that it's really not going to cause a problem anyway.

Is the radio type-accepted by the FCC to operate in the VHF land-mobile band (150-174) or not? Simple question. If the answer is no, stop, go directly to a real radio dealer, do not pass go, do not collect $200, and buy a real radio that's accepted to work on that band.

crazyboy wrote:No where in there did he say that the radio was a ham radio. Vertex is a commercial radio brand. And programming ham freqs into a commercial radio in addition to public safetey freqs is perfectly legal.

Well I'm curious as to the model number, because unless its one of the newer radios in a remote, dual tray, remote control head configuration, then I have never heard of it. Yaseu made a dual band portable that was commercial type excepted, but the only dual band mobile I ever saw was a government run unit made Bendix and it was bulky. So please get us a model number cause if they are making one I would definitley be interested. I only know of the Vertex4000 and 5500 series being able to dual them up... ??

PS I have 2 antennex B132S new in the bag. The pair can be had for $65 shipped.

It is type accepted, I verified this with Yeasu, which is also owned by VERTEX now, its a 8000 series remote head single drawer with one antenna output on the drawer. Secondly, if he is using the radio to MONITOR PS freq's the FCC could care less about type acceptance.

ffemt1764 wrote:It is type accepted, I verified this with Yeasu, which is also owned by VERTEX now, its a 8000 series remote head single drawer with one antenna output on the drawer. Secondly, if he is using the radio to MONITOR PS freq's the FCC could care less about type acceptance.

8000 Series? Like what? The FT-8x00 series of ham radios, such as FT-8800? Vertex does not have VX model #s into the 8000's for their commercial radios...only the FT line for hams.

Those are ham radios that are -NOT- FCC type accepted for public safety use. Period.

What does it look like? This perhaps...?

ffemt1764 wrote: Secondly, if he is using the radio to MONITOR PS freq's the FCC could care less about type acceptance.

Going back to your original question - If it is going to be for RX only outside of the ham band then all he needs is any good 2M ham antenna. The SWR will not matter for 148-174 reception. It should work fine for monitoring anything on high band.

Ok, its a ham rig, I had hoped maybe something new sprouted up.
As mentioned above a properly tuned antenna for the 2 meter side, and it will still do fine on rx up in the 160s which that radio does out of the box.

Vertex does make a "dual band" commerical mobile. its really 2 single band moble with a single controlling head. Much the same way kenwood tk-x30 and x80 series can be used dual band.

I can only assume thats the way he is getting dual band out of vertex.

yes, we said that including the model numbers in a post about 5 up.....