>MSGID: 1:280/333@fidonet.org b40aa5ea
HH>>It depends on what you want to do. Short-range communications
HH>>will work fine with a little one. If you are way out in the Boonies
HH>>a full-size antenna can make a big difference.
>    I got an amazing 17 miles out of one of those Radio Shack gutter
>    mount antennas once.  Of course, I was talking to a base station
>    that was using a mast-mounted ground plane, but considering it
>    was on Channel 19, I was pretty impressed.  Another time I got
>    25 miles mobile-to-mobile with a longer magnetic-mount.  That
>    time I was considerably out in the boonies and the channel was
>    much quieter.
Oh yes. At times anything will work well. I was talking about under "normal"
conditions. "Normally" the longer antenna the better as long as it's resonate
of course. It's just simple physics. If two antennas are both resonate
the physically longer (and/or higher) one will pick up more signals more of
the time. Not always......but more of the time.
"When the band is open you can work the world on a piece of wet string"
KG9EV
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