Advice on handheld VHF

thataway · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 11:20 pm Post subject:

Gary, although I do swap out the antennas on my 2 meters, I have not seen any real reason to do so not he hand held Marine VHF. Some who don't have a fixed radio on the boat will hook up mini SMA Male Connector to a PL 259 connector and swap out the hand held antenna, for higher gain marine fixed VHF antenna. There are cables available on Amazon for just this purpose. There is some loss at each connection, but the higher elevation and gain of the real marine antenna makes up for that, and I would expect a slightly longer range, depending on conditions.

The Standard Horizon antenna on the HX 890 (same as on my HX 870-although the 890 is a better radio) seems pretty good for a short rubber ducky. I run a Morad 156 MHz VHF Marine Antenna 6dB gain ("Hot Rod"), on top of my radar arch as the primary VHF antenna. The Morad antennas are a bit more expensive, but each is hand tested for SWR.

If I buy a off the shelf antenna, I take an antenna tester with me (MFJ 259D), to check the SWR--I have found that they can wildly vary in the "recreational grade" antennas. One of the few times it may pay to shop at your local West Marine store.

I have put the analyzer on some hand held antennas in the past and the SWR is decent.

I'm not as bad as Harvey--I only have 2 fixed mount Marine VHF and 3 hand heads....I usually run one on channel 16 and the other on either the tug working frequency or a traffic scheme frequency. I'll keep one of the hand held on the frequency that C Brats may be using in our gatherings. I don't monitor channel 9 much. I have the MMSI number in all of those radios which will accept it.

garyf · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 2:02 pm Post subject:

Thanks, Bob, just the answer I was looking for.

I've got a lot of updating to do, and taking it one step at a time... if I can kick the can down the road a bit on a built-in Marine VHF, I think I'll do that since I don't plan to wander too far anytime soon.

Good lead on the Morad antennas as well... I'll check them out... I've never heard of them, but haven't dug too deeply in that area yet. I'm spinning a lot of new plates getting this old girl updated and rolling again.