I’ve seen that most of the handheld UHF business radios have detachable antennas. I was wondering if the antenna connectors on the radios were relatively standard across brands or if each manufacturer uses a proprietary connector.
I’m working on a project where I’m building my own external antenna that will hook into a UHF radio I already have. I’d like to set it up in such a way that if I upgrade the radio later, I can still use the antenna setup without having to re-terminate the cable and ideally without using an adapter.
On the contrary, external antenna connectors are a maze of styles. The best thing is to post the make and model of the radio plus a good close-up shot of the connector and the end of the antenna while off. This will help.
One thing to keep in mind is that an external antenna will not always give you better performance. In my tests of the Motorola DTR radios that run in the 900 MHz spectrum, the built-in rubber ducky actually performed better than an external antenna mounted on the roof of a vehicle. This may be because the very high 900 MHz frequencies tend to propagate very well through metal and glass structures, and at this end of the spectrum, the loss of signal through the long cable exceeded the gain from the higher external antenna.
Given that I’ll have to use an adapter do you have any recommendation for what type of connector to use to terminate the main cable? After doing some more research it looks like there are a lot of BNC to xxx adapters available for several brands of radios so I’m thinking I’ll use that for now and then just get a new adapter if I change the radio.
You didn’t say how long the coaxial cable is from the portable to the external antenna. Take into consideration you will have loss through the cable, so, depending on the quality and length of the cable you may not get that much help. There is also loss through each connector, so you will just have to make it and try it and hope for the best.