Ok, it is a quarter wave antenna then, It will be great broadbander, good for more than just 11 meters, I might have to play with building something like this
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Tram 1411 - Impressed
- Thread starter Louisiana Mudd
- Start date
I would love to replicate this antenna, I really like the performance
hmmph.
I tend to think that it’s operating as a 1/4 wave ground plane (albeit loaded) at 27mhz. Nothing wrong with that...working like most mobile antennas, I would think.
But, my knowledge of antennas only gets worse when you cram 600+ MHz or more bandwidth into them. Haha.
I forget who said that a discone as a scanner antenna brought in all they needed and more.
Thats the boat I’m in. With my RS Discone I can hear public service in the five surrounding counties...way more than I need. Performance on 850Mhz is good as well. Airband is why I have it...and it’s great there too. I’ve tried a number of monoband antennas, and with the exception of a 850Mhz yagi...there’s no been improvement over the discone.
Thats with the antenna mounted in my attic.
I tend to think that it’s operating as a 1/4 wave ground plane (albeit loaded) at 27mhz. Nothing wrong with that...working like most mobile antennas, I would think.
But, my knowledge of antennas only gets worse when you cram 600+ MHz or more bandwidth into them. Haha.
I forget who said that a discone as a scanner antenna brought in all they needed and more.
Thats the boat I’m in. With my RS Discone I can hear public service in the five surrounding counties...way more than I need. Performance on 850Mhz is good as well. Airband is why I have it...and it’s great there too. I’ve tried a number of monoband antennas, and with the exception of a 850Mhz yagi...there’s no been improvement over the discone.
Thats with the antenna mounted in my attic.
I have a discone in the mmana model software, it does not have the whip on top, but in model, it shows less than one dbi gain, pattern about the same as a 1/4 wave ground plane. So a 1/4 wave would out perform a discone a little, but not enough you would likely notice, I would think the added whip with the tram design brings it up to equal performance to the groundplane antenna. All you would need for ok performance, and all you need for portable. On portable it becomes more important where you put it than what it is, if you can find a good clear hill, it will work quite well. As a base antenna it will be useable, if you get it up 50 feet to the top it will work good. It should perform equal to a vertical dipole or 1/4 wave ground plane .
Thanks for the reply, the antenna offers great performance for what it is. For a portable I could not ask for better.
I have found with all my antenna testing that close in 10 miles out anything will work well enough, out 30 miles the difference between a 1/4 wave and something with double the gain like a quad is huge, it can be the difference of being able to communicate or not. The farther out your talking the more you get from a better antenna and more height. THE 30-50 Mile zone on cb radio takes the best of everything.It takes a good gain antenna, at 50 plus feet on a good ssb radio to have good comms out in the 30-50 mile range. Those last 10 miles take a lot of work. Where I live there are maybe 6 or 7 of us on ssb cb radio, we are all 30 to 50 miles apart. Every bit helps. Over 50 miles, your fighting the curve of the earth, it takes huge amounts of power, not my thing. Skip is another matter, it is mostly mother nature. A good set up for 30 miles will do the trick when conditions are good.
Yes looks ideal for portable.I have been running a vertical dipole, it works well enough, the nice thing about portable, is if you find a nice hill, you can have great comms. Any kind of gain antenna is not worth the effort for portable. Nice thing about the tram, is that broad banding makes it great for all sorts of bands and scanning, so it offers everything you could ask for on the go. My dipole is single band for sure. I will keep my out for one of these. I think it is a very interesting antenna, lotta bang for the buck.
True enough. From a perspective that is purely mobile...
DX is where I see a big difference in antennas. For example, testing on my own using an S meter, it’s exceptionally hard to see a difference with any mobile antenna from 5’ - full 1/4 wave.
And when DX is good, a Wilson 1000 on the roof of pickup will work it.
But there is zero question to me the a 1/4 wave whip is vastly superior in DX. The difference when testing local is little more than a sliver of an S meter needle...but the difference in DX is contact or no contact.
I have found the better the antenna the better the dx, I had the same antenna on 2 towers here, One at 30 feet feed, one at 45 feet feed, the higher antenna does the skip, the lower one does not. I have a horizontal on the 30 foot right now, USELESS. I need to get it up higher, maybe my next project.
On my mobile I have been running a President Texas riding around, and a 102” for DX. I can’t find a LICK of difference testing local...but I’m shocked at the difference in DX.
Just over the past few days I’ve decided to run the whip full time. Tied down for driving around town, and upright for DX. No more climbing in the bed to swap antennas. So far so good...and it works pretty good tied down, too, since I only need to reduce the height by a bit.
Well I have only tried the 1411 6ft off of the ground and it works well, when I get back to TX I want to order another (along with an A-99) and throw them in the air to compare the results.
Should be a hair over 14 with the whip fully up. But I will hit stuff non-stop like that.
I tickle stuff all day with a 60ish inch Wilson, which should be about 11’, and whack the hell out of stuff with the Pres Texas at close to or just under 13’.
I’m tying down for travel with a light braided fishing line, as I want a breakaway connection so I don’t make a sunroof
