Batboard

Trying to come up with my final soultion to my next install. Its looks like I am going to dump the Sti-Co antenna out of sanity and work. I really don't like the idea of disassembling have the truck...although the Sti-Co antenna would be really slick.

So, I am thinking of using another diamond dualband antenna to carry my VHF Astro and UHF Orion radio (50/100 watt). I'd like to use one antenna for both.

Who has the magical mobile combiner boxes that are cheap, but not too expensive out there to make this work? Most tx will be on the VHF side with mostly RX on UHF. Smaller the box the better due to space limitations.

PJ, you must be half asleep. You normally provide more details in what your working on.

If your talikng about some form of duplex filter to combine multiple radios onto one antenna, you could look at the Austin Antenna unit. They make them in both a dual band and a tri-band version. They run about $150 or $170 for the tri-band unit. This allows you to have VHF, UHF and 800 all on one single antenna and feedline.

You could use a dual band or a tri-band antenna from Comtelco. The antennas look like a normal 800 MHz pig tail coiled antenna you see on cars for the 800 radios. Just the dimensions are a little different.

Jim

Pj wrote:Trying to come up with my final soultion to my next install. Its looks like I am going to dump the Sti-Co antenna out of sanity and work. I really don't like the idea of disassembling have the truck...although the Sti-Co antenna would be really slick.

So, I am thinking of using another diamond dualband antenna to carry my VHF Astro and UHF Orion radio (50/100 watt). I'd like to use one antenna for both.

Who has the magical mobile combiner boxes that are cheap, but not too expensive out there to make this work? Most tx will be on the VHF side with mostly RX on UHF. Smaller the box the better due to space limitations.

Either the Diamond, like you mentioned or Larsen .. I use a Diamond 73 in the NMO set with dual MCX1000s. As for the splitter, either Radial Larsen or Diamond, just check your power ratings. Also the Diamonds (73)can fold over, if you need to get in a garage or low clearance area.

He was half asleep. Sitting at work after running out to watch a medevac landing instead of sleeping. At least he wasn't late... I was ready to jump off the tower by midnight when I was leaving. (Yes PJ and I work at the same place)

Either way. From conversations yesterday during the day that he and I had. He's got low band, UHF, VHF, and 800 that he wants to put in his new truck. An 04 or 05 Chevy Avalanche. He wants to do some dual banding of radios and stuff to save space since there is a facotry console and he wants to limit the amount of antennas on the truck. I think he was talking about 2 antennas or so MAX on the roof and then something for lowband.

Now, knowing PJ... that plan may have changed 8 times from when I left his house yesterday at 2pm and when he got to work at midnight.

Yeah... I am going on 24.5 hours up at this point.

My idea is to have no more than 2 antenna's on the roof if possible, my goal was two (800, 2M/440 dual band).

Now that I am dumping the Sti-Co AM/FM dual band look alike, it means I need to find two more antenna's or combine the two commericals into one antenna. I really don't want 4 up there due to space limitiations and looks (it has a sunroof so...)

What I would like to do is run my ICOM off of my existing dualband 770H? Diamond antenna, and run my VHF Astro and UHF orion into another dualband 770H diamond antenna, with 800 still being on its own antenna (bringing the max antenna's on the roof to 3..I won't hang myself over that).

I just need something that will combine the two outputs to the other dualband antenna that won't fry the other radio (no el-cheapo products).

Now what I wrote above makes perfect sense to me, but I am sure I just complicated the issue. Must....sleep...now..

Just to let you know the Orion radios will not work with duplexers or triplexers. I tried to run my VHF unit with a Diamond triplexer that would cover 800,VHF and UHF and it would not hit a repeater 5 miles away. I did some checking around and was told they need their own antennas.I hooked up my 50 watt VHF Orion to its own antenna right after trying the triplexer and it worked just fine. However, I ran my 800mhz EDACS Orion through the same triplexer and it works just fine but it is programmed as recieve only. I used to use a VHF and UHF Spectra and my 800 mhz Orion and the Spectras worked just fine so the Orions don't like anything but their own antenna to transmit on. I have a UHF Orion as well and I'm not even going to try it with that radio. Just wanted to pass that on as you don't want to fry your Orions.

Any radios can share an antenna provided a good diplexer is used. I have had nothing but luck with Comet models. I had a Comet triplexer feeding three X9000's, lowband, VHF, and UHF, all at 100W, and never had a single problem with performance on transmit and receive.

I buy most of my gear from Universal Radio these days, except for some commercial stuff from other sources. Here is the Diplexer/Triplexer page over there.

http://universal-radio.com/catalog/hamantm/cduplex.html

The CF-416A is what most would choose for combining two radios to a dual band antenna. I was using a CFX-514 in the mobile to combine the X9000's before i switched over to the FT-8900R quad band radio in there now.

Pj,

I have had very good results using the Comtelco A1531B dual band antenna for VHf/UHF (http://www.rfwiz.com/Comtelco/ComtelcoMobile4.htm) and the maxrad diplexer. The antenna is very well made and has wideband coverage. The diplexer is a little expensive but also performs very well.

Those were exactly what I was looking for. I know I have seen one of those websites but completely forgot about.

Thanks guys!