My second Midland 6 dB Gain Antenna has broken above the coil on the antenna on my Jeep. The first one broke as I hit a tree branch with it and it weakened (I have it mounted high, on a heavy-duty wind faring). I don’t know what happened to this one, other than we get high winds, and I was driving on some rough roads.
Recommendations?
This antenna is paired with a MXT115. I have the same antenna paired with a KG-1000G on a roof mount on a pickup truck.
I added a spring base to the antenna on my Jeep and on my FJ later, which is taller. I haven’t bent or broken an antenna since I did this. YMMV.
I went to short Tram Browning NMO with a spring on my roof of pickup and it has work well so far. Struck something with it 2 days ago and it is okay.
Not 4X4 but I have a van and it’s about 1.9m tall and I use it for work so had uhf and vhf antennas on top. I had 5/8ths for VHF and I used a 5/8th over 1/4w for uhf. Occasionally I’d have to mark in multi story car parks and would regularly break these. I replaced these antennas with 1/4w vhf. So 1/4w for vhf is 3/4wave at uhf. These bang on the roof beams of the car parks and make nasty noises on height barriers but none have broken and the range is rarely an issue, they’re much more wide band, so ham bands, business and leisure bands are happy on the radios and I wish I’d dumped the clever antennas years ago. Uhf works really well on the vhf antenna, I suspect the lower radiation angle works for me. Best bit is the mounts allow forward and back adjustment but when you hit something hard, they just angle back.
Thanks Bob, and welcome to the forum.
Thanks go out to all who applied. I ended up picking up a new antenna locally that seems to be a little higher quality. 5 has 5 dB gain instead of 6, but seems to be getting the job done.
Hopefully this one will last a litlte longer. It does have a spring base.
On my rigs I tend to run 1/4 wave antennas on the roof unless it’s a soft top where that just isn’t practical (then I run a 1/2 wave antenna on the driver’s side fender) for VHF/UHF applications. I’ve found it’s just really hard to beat the functionality and simplicity of a 1/4 wave antenna in most real world mobile applications. They are cheap, typically $10 or less for a name brand Laird or Larsen, and depending on the terrain are more effective.
On my Cherokee I run a Larsen NMOQB with spring for VHF on the roof. It’s been there for 10 years now, drags going in and out of the garage, I hit it on things quite often, never have had a problem with it. On the same Cherokee I also run a Larsen NMO27B for CB on the fender. No spring, never have had a problem.