Team, I have recently had a Daystar GMRS Radio installed in my Jeep. The antenna placement and height are poorly designed and I need to replace the antenna. But I’m a newbie here and not sure if there are any specifics on which antenna I can use… Can you guys help me by recommending a replacement antenna that may not be the “whip” style or this short?
Here’s the radio / antenna I have: (Link removed. Please read the Forum Rules before posting links.)
I appreciate the help and guidance.
Mark
Midland makes a good mobile antenna with 6db of advertised gain.
https://www.buytwowayradios.com/midland-mxta26.html
People have had good results with that. The only caution is that ANY antenna depends heavily on mounting location to work properly. I am not an expert in mobile radios so I will leave it up to others to explain the importance of ground plane and how it affects propagation.
Are you sure that antenna is performing poorly, or are your expectations too high? Please don’t believe marketing claims about GMRS radios being able to transmit at 35 miles.
The other thing I would question is why Daystar is selling an amateur handheld radio (UV5R) that is not legal for use on GMRS frequencies. Millions of people do of course, but Daystar seems pretty open about it. It makes me question the overall quality of their product.
Thank you! I meant by not performing, was not in any way towards teh operations, it actually seems to work well but only to about 3-5 miles. However, I meant to refer to the mounting bracket / location. They offer with this radio a bracket and mount that put the antenna right along the A-Pillar. Not only do I THINK this is a bad location, but it rattles against the a-pilllar in any wind… like the highway… hello? …
If that picture reflects how you’d use the jeep, payload wise, I’d just make up a few struts to support and antenna base perched a bit above the roof luggage.
Use a low firing vertical, and where the rules allow, a half-wave or collinear, and your going to be as good as it gets without having a flagpole mast perching the antenna twice or more the height of the vehicle.
Alternative if roof mounting isn’t feasible but antenna sitting and types permitted allow for it, you could use a more body mounted setup and go co-phased vertical pairs or quad phased verticals, but somehow I sense that’ll be way outside of the most LMR rules allow for.
Which is a shame, as UHF radio is well inside the beginnings of where phased arrays actually start becoming compact enough to fit many vehicles and get a good effective setup relatively speaking.
