I’m a total newb, patience please.
I’m a cabbie. I’m getting a new taxi, a Ford Escape Hybrid. I will need to keep it in my garage, and the antenna needs to clear the garage door. The antennas for the 2 way radios that our company usually uses are about 1.5 to 2 feet tall. I need an antenna about 6-8 inches shorter to clear the garage door.
They are very simple antennas, just a piece of stiff wire. Can I just clip it off a little, without suffering too much in performance? Or is it possible to just get some sort of shorter antenna?
We use pretty basic Motorola 2 way radios.
Thank you, input is greatly appreciated.
Maybe you could locate it in one of the areas I have in this picture. Just adjust the height to clear the door. I would refrain from a shorter antenna. Just relocate the antenna that you would normally use. Absolutely, under no circumstances, do you “snip” an antenna. You will burn up your radio if you do. You move the entire antenna as a unit, you don’t trim it to fit.
Oh yea, and that’s one dad gum nice looking taxi.
Antennas are designed to operate best for radios at a specific frequency. This in some ways determines the length of the antenna. While you can trim an antenna yourself, you have to know exactly what you are doing or you could lose a lot of range. If you know the exact frequencies of the radio, we might be able to help you find one that will work for you.
I don’t know what type of radio service your company uses but most that I am aware of, at least in th US, use business frequencies in either VHF or UHF bands. Usually, the cab company has a radio shop which could help you in this matter. I would suggest using a magnetic mount antenna if you are purchasing this vehicle as you really don’t want holes drilled if you can avoid it.
If you were to install the antenna yourself, there should be a number of available low-profile antennas available. The important thing to remember is to match the impedance of the radio with the antenna- not so important when receiving but EXTREMELY IMPORTANT when transmitting. This can be done with an SWR meter and trimming the antenna to give the best ratio- as close to 1:1 as possible- some transceivers have an adjustment on the back of the radio to accomplish this instead of trimming the antenna but most commercial radios don’t as most are installed by professionals (for fleet use). You want a good working radio if you company relies on a lot of radio work to make money. Good luck!