First attempt with homemade antennas and newly bought comercial antennas

One of the tested homemade antennas.

I have now some rudimentary test of my homemade antennas. To be honest, it isn't brilliant. I made some a roockie mistake. Error 1: I didn't measure it with an SWR meter before I deployed it in the field. As I evaluate their performance (both homemade antennas) they performed well in the beginning. But at some point the signal got weaker, and weaker, and weaker. And it seems that the one who spoke the most got weaker than the other faster. My best guess is that the tuning of the antenna is a bit off and too much of the transmitting power is transferred back to the transmitter and the overheating is strangling the transmitter. I hope no damage is done. Luckily it was a cheap chineese Puxing radio, so it isn't impossible to replace for me.

So to counter this and perhaps fix the antennas, I've bought SWR meter by Nissei (RS-40). It has recieved a bit of mixed reviews. Hopefully mine works fine. The SWR meter are going to be connected in between the antenna and the radio, measuring how much power is being transmitted and the SWR meter shows the relation between transmit power to the antenna and how much is echoed back at the transmitter. The trick here is that an antenna has different SWR at different frequencies. So my 445 MHz Duck from Smiley Antenna is pretty good at 445 MHz, however it is probably pretty misrable at 144 MHz with a high SWR value.

I have now orderen N type to BNC connectors so I actually can hook up the WSR meter and test the antennas.

In the mean time I've bought a few comercial antennas. One is a Comet antenna: 

It's small, thin, stealthy, very lightweight and VERY durable. I sure hope it is useable. It is tunes at 430 MHz, which is 14 and  16 MHz off target. But I've bought two of them so I can try to tune one to the correct lenght with the SWR meter when I get the connectors.

As you can see the Comet antenna is so flexible it can be bend from top to bottom without damaging the antenna. I think it's pretty airsoft grade.

A also bought a dipole antenna to wear on the body. I really have to experiment with this one. I have to figure out if it works on the 444/446 MHz, if I can tune it (bought two of them as well) and how to wear it on the body for best coverage.

 Another antenna, which is a pretty cool one, is a flat and Slim Jim antenna. It can be packed as roll and deployed into a tree. It is tuned at 70 cm and 2 m band (440/135). This is an quickly deploy extra antenna to improve the coverage of you radio. It has a little plastic clips on the end to tie paracord and drag the antenna into a tree. It's got 2,5 meter cord so it can get pretty high. Also it features ferrit core to eliminate RF travelling down the line and making noise. I think I should be careful with transmitting too much with this one until I've SWR tested it at 444/446.

I'll probably report back with some results in 14 days (Chineese shipping time).