I’m looking for a few antenna suggestions for in the house, out sota tearing and in the van “Transit connect” and I don’t mind drilling a hole😁
Also can the said antennas be used for digital work
Any advice welcomed
Home made or commercial, I don’t mind as long as they perform well
Thanx
Hi Iain,
As you’re talking about a 2 metre / 70cm dual band HT in the FT2DE, for SOTA work on a summit a favorite is the RH770 antenna that fastens to the antenna socket on the HT and has quite a long telescopic antenna on it (make sure you order one with the correct connector). This gives a major improvement over the standard “rubber duck” antenna. Of course you can then go up to J-poles (as Marton suggests) - you’d need one for 2m and one for 70cm or even a small beam - The Arrow and Elk range dual band beams come to mind but you’ll need a mast of some kind as well to support these options. For most situations in the UK, the RH-770 is probably adequate.
For mobile use on the Transit van, there are lots of options but the simplest would be a combined 1/4 wave 2m / 5/8 wave whip on a mag mount. Yes you can drill a hole and put a mount through the roof, however by going the mag mount route, you can take this antenna inside and slap it on top of a fridge or filing cabinet to use inside the house. Of course operation with an antenna inside the house isn’t going to be as good as having one outside, but for temporary use, for local contacts or accessing the local repeater it should work.
Mag mounts tend to come with an SO-239 socket hence you would need an antenna with a PL-259 plug on it. You could in theory use an adapter and put that RH-770 on the mag mount but it’s not really constructed for use in the winds on top of a moving vehicle, but for short term use or parked-up usage, it could be one antenna for all three needs (and it’s not expensive).
Whether you are running analogue FM or Digital - Yaesu Fusion, the antenna is the same. It’s vertically polarised.
73 Ed.
i have one of these antennas and they are awesome for what they are. Just be careful in windy conditions and to always hold the handheld vertical. The length and subsequent weight of the antenna never looks good for the socket personally.
73
Anthony
I find the RH770 antenna clamps down nicely onto my HT with it’s reverse SMA socket - I suspect the version for a HT with a BNC socket might not be as good because of the physical size and bayonet technology used in that socket. I know the RHM-8B HF whip from Diamond, when I use it on my FT-817’s BNC socket, I am never happy with the strain it exerts.
73 Ed.
Hi
Il need to do some research on the said antennas, like the jpole rollup and the beams
Don’t know about the RH770, looks as if it would be dodgy on a handset, plus theirs a minefield of variants of it, maybe some are copies, which is fine if they work
Many thanx
Hi Ed, is it really reverse SMA or just the other gender? Reverse SMA is when the thread is reversed left/right not a gender swap.
Compton
It’s a back-to-front SMA like those used in Wifi. They are advertised as RP-SMA for reverse polarity. They really should be called hermaphrodite-SMA because what looks like a female component has male centre pieces and female outers and the male nut-like component has female centre pieces and male outers. They were designed so that people couldn’t simply use existing microwave cables/antennas with Wifi and use illegal amplifiers and antennas with the type-approved unlicensed Wifi gear.
Of course what normally happens is you have both Wifi and normal patch leads laying about and you decide to play about with the house Wifi and you pick up any random lead then spend 5 minutes with your hand up the back of a shelf like some DIY obstetrician trying to get the damn SMA patch lead to screw on to the router. That’s when you realise you are trying to mix RP-SMA and SMA.
Ah, yes, the third varient.
3 versions of SMA which are all compliant to the standard yet incompatible. You just gotta love standards! 
Ok ive bought a Diamond RH771, also put it on analyser to check it, and it looks good, although no contact on it as yet
Built a 4 element yagi as well, just followed the YouTube video of Peter P, for the sized, also put that on analyser and it’s very good swr throughout the vhf amateur band, though no contacts yet
I still cannot hear, or contact the Local repeater in Inverness area
I’m using ctcss 67
Vhf dead up here
Iain
Hi Iain,
was that a typo or did you buy the RH-771 that looks like the picture below and is only 2m not 70cm from what I read:
The one below is the one I was talking about and sent the link to - the dual-band and higher gain RH-770
The RH-770 costs about 11-13 Euros, the RH-771 is 30 Euros!
73 Ed.
Yeah it’s the 771,
I will get the 770 as well, but it be a china job to buy that one, month to deliver
Also bought Nagoya 771 ,”just looks like diamond rh771 and 773 and the diamond srh 805 but haven’t put them on antenna analyser yet or power meter
805 is for when handy is in rucksack
I don’t like the ft2de antenna jack rather it were bnc
Then it wouldn’t fit in the case!
Remember, handhelds are designed to work with small low performance antennas they come with. There will be very little to support the turning moment of a long antenna, you will have to do that or the socket and the case/chassis of the handy wont last long.
SWR is a useful to know. It tells you how good a match the antenna + feed is to the radio. It doesn’t tell you anything about how well the antenna works as an antenna. Easily shown by the fact my dummy load has a 1:1 SWR at 145.500MHz yet is a perfectly terrible antenna.
OK, understood. I hope the RH770 arrives soon as you should see the difference with that antenna over the others.
Similar antennas are often available under different company names. I believe Diamond do design and build some of their own antennas but they also buy and rebadge ones from other companies. It’s all a matter of economics - if you have a small chinese company building good aerials and selling to distributors like Diamond, Nagoya, Sirio, Hoxin, Sharman, Comet and several others - the best price is obtained by this one company producing the antennas in bulk and then either the distributors badging them, themselves or have another company do that for them.
I believe this happens more often than antennas actually being reverse engineered and copied - at the prices these antennas sell at - there would be no profit for the company copying the antenna after they’ve covered their reverse engineering costs.
I agree with Andy - SWR doesn’t tell you anything but if the Analyser shows a dip across the 2m and/or 70cm bands and a high SWR elsewhere - that’s a good indication. As these HTs come covering a wide range however the standard rubber-ducky is a wide band antenna, which is one of the reasons it doesn’t perform nearly as well as say a 1/4 wave length of copper wire. So if your after market antennas have a dip and the suppluied ruber duckie doesn’t it indicates that the after market antennas should work better.
73 Ed.
Thanx Andy and Ed
I’ve just done a swr check on the Nagoya 771 and diamond 771
They look the same but that is it, they. Obviously aren’t made the same as swr shows
I need to go walkies with the ft2 and all the antenna’s and get my son to see if he can hear me on 817 in the house, seems best idea
Will the China one be as good as the U.K. sellers?, this is the question, what with all the copies
Looking at the Diamond RH-770 sold by Radioworld - the picture shows identical packaging to my ordered from China and received in 10 days one.
By the way the 4X4 store is a little cheaper but still twice the price as getting it from China.
https://www.cbradio.co.uk/amateur-radio/ham-antennae/rh-770-dual-band-antenna.html
And DONT FORGET - you have to get it with the right connector.
Of course there’s nothing stopping one of the distributors giving their no-name antenna, the same or a different number to other distributors. So the two RH-771’s that you have could be different antennas. Then again QA on one might not be as good as on the other - hence the worse SWR.
Ha! Radioworld sell a Sharman RH-770 and a diamond RH-770 with nearly a £20 price difference!
73 Ed.
Thanx Ed
Most have bnc, mine is
Different on FT2
Il scan the net tonight for the Diamond antenna, and try get a Car mount as well
The RH-770 with whichever distributors name on it, come with either BNC, SMA or what is called in the ads, reverse SMA connectors on them - it depends what stock the dealers are carrying but all types area available from China.
73 Ed.