UHF Laser Antennas

Hi Mike,

There is no magic bullet, (grin) some antennas may perform marginally better than others , save your money and get the bog standard one from supercheap, they work as well as any.

If however you want "better" radio coms in the car consider becoming a radio ham and get a foundation license , this will give you many more options and is not hard to do... you never know you might enjoy it!

Best regards

John VK3ARK

Mike, in the bush I use a Laser UHF antenna and it works fine. This is a 6db gain antenna and from tip to base measures about 82cm. It is black and flexible. That means that in the bush it is less subject to damage from bushes (if mounted on the bull bar) or trees or shopping centre car park accidents (if mounted roof high) than a "white stick" with spring base, and it receives signals better that my little "rubber duck" 1db gain 18cm long $20 antenna that I use in the city so the good one doesn't get in the way or get nicked. 6db gain is not 6 times better than 1db (called unity gain), we won't go into that right now, just call it "better". It also helps that when tmy UHF radio was installed it was specifically tuned by a radio tech. to the Laser antenna (called adjusting the SWR - Standing Wave Ratio) so it transmits a bit better (cleaner, stronger) than the rubber duck antenna which is not quite so precisely tuned.
There are antenna designs that favour UHF signals in hilly country, and ones that favour signals in flat country. This is called their radiating pattern. One needs to consider where you are going to use it most.
In any event, in general terms, the higher you mount any particular antenna on your vehicle the better it will work. That is, a roof/gutter mount will always be better for a given antenna than a bull bar mount. Then again €where you mount it depends on your vehicle and what else you intend to mount on the roof, and where you normally park your vehicle, etc. etc.
Hope this helps. a bit. Rob - VK5KP