Tarheel2 screwdriver. Sucks on my truck. Racket, low recieve. Resonance still shuts truck down still. Steel whip does not. So is there something missing? A capacitor or coil or a chant? What am I missing? People seem to love them but I'm not in love yet
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Is tarheel crap or is it just me
- Thread starter nfsus
- Start date
What whip do you have on it? I use a High Serria Sidekick, similar to the Little Tarheel and I replaced the 36" whip with a 72" and it created a much better antenna.
The Little Tarheel HP is the better antenna for a this size. Not because it handles more power, but because this antenna uses far less tuning coil for each band compared to yours. For this reason, this antenna requires an external antenna matching coil to bring up the lowered feedpoint impedance while yours does it within the antennas tuning coil itself. The matching coil losses are minimal since it's at the feedpoint. One drawback for some to the HP model is that it's only tunable down to 40 meters with the standard whip. 80 meters on a mobile is less than 5% ERP anyway so it isn't a big deal for me.
Your antenna can do 80 meters with no external matching which means that antenna uses way more loading coil to tune than the HP model on 40 meters meaning very low efficiency due to big losses in all that loading coil being used. The more coil used to tune, the more the ERP goes in the tank!
IMHO, the Little Tarheel 2 is just an efficient leaking dummy load! Think about it, 6 thru 80 meters for an antenna no longer than a typical fiberglass CB antenna and requires NO antenna matching? Just plug and play is why I believe people choose this model.
W9CLL makes a good point that a longer whip will improve it some but you will likely lose 6 meters and the longer whip you go you'll start losing 10m and beyond.
I'm using the HP antenna with a fairly rigid 5 ft steel whip., This let's me tune down to 60 meters and still has an inch or two of coil left. I did lose 6 meters but that''s OK because bands above 20 meters use far less tuning coil to tune meaning improved efficiency over the stock flimsy whip. I can easily just switch out the whip if there is a worthwhile opening on 6m.
Unless you desire 80 meter mobile operation, I would return that antenna and get the HP model if your mobile operation requires using a smaller size screwdriver antenna. I can and easily do 80 meters on my HP with a 17 ft telescoping whip on it but obviously this is when I'm stationary. This will effectively increase the ERP not only on 80 but bands up to 20 meters!
Your antenna can do 80 meters with no external matching which means that antenna uses way more loading coil to tune than the HP model on 40 meters meaning very low efficiency due to big losses in all that loading coil being used. The more coil used to tune, the more the ERP goes in the tank!
IMHO, the Little Tarheel 2 is just an efficient leaking dummy load! Think about it, 6 thru 80 meters for an antenna no longer than a typical fiberglass CB antenna and requires NO antenna matching? Just plug and play is why I believe people choose this model.
W9CLL makes a good point that a longer whip will improve it some but you will likely lose 6 meters and the longer whip you go you'll start losing 10m and beyond.
I'm using the HP antenna with a fairly rigid 5 ft steel whip., This let's me tune down to 60 meters and still has an inch or two of coil left. I did lose 6 meters but that''s OK because bands above 20 meters use far less tuning coil to tune meaning improved efficiency over the stock flimsy whip. I can easily just switch out the whip if there is a worthwhile opening on 6m.
Unless you desire 80 meter mobile operation, I would return that antenna and get the HP model if your mobile operation requires using a smaller size screwdriver antenna. I can and easily do 80 meters on my HP with a 17 ft telescoping whip on it but obviously this is when I'm stationary. This will effectively increase the ERP not only on 80 but bands up to 20 meters!
I never used 6 in the car and 10 was usable but biggest difference was on 20 And 40, performance really improved there. When tuning the wasn't as snap and made it easier when I was tuning it with the switch, once I switched to the turbo tuner is was never a problem anymore.
I have two Little Tarheel antennas, run one on my '96 Tacoma and the other was shared between my '84 Vanagon Westfalia and '02 Tundra (which is gone now). I also used the longer whips to use less coil.
I mainly operate on 75M, and sometimes on 40M when traveling long distances. I haven't needed to install an external shunt coil with the Little Tarheels, but did need to experiment with multiple iterations of them when installing HiQ antennas on other people's vehicles.
Here's one I still had hanging in the garage ...
I mainly operate on 75M, and sometimes on 40M when traveling long distances. I haven't needed to install an external shunt coil with the Little Tarheels, but did need to experiment with multiple iterations of them when installing HiQ antennas on other people's vehicles.
Here's one I still had hanging in the garage ...
Attachments
Not a clear pic of the shunt coil to see what you used. It needs to be enameled wire with the ends having the enameled scraped off so it can be attached to a ring terminal and ground.
The Little Tarheel is not likely to benefit from a shunt coil because the antennas has the matching from within and that's why that antenna doesn't come with one.
The Little Tarheel HP has far less and thicker coil inside the antenna and has a feedpoint impedance of less than 20 ohms on 40 meters and a bit higher on other bands. This lower feedpoint impedance needs the shunt coil to bring it up to 50 ohms.
Tarheel sells the shunt coils. I had a Little Tarheel on my Jeep for a few months, many years ago. I sold it because it just didn't meet my expectations for what I was trying to accomplish...meaning it was basically a dummy load except under the best propagation conditions. You said that it "shuts truck down". What do you mean by that?