comtekradio

The first time I tried running two radios through one feedline, I treated the problem as though it were plumbing. One line coming down from the antenna, two radios sitting on the bench. Surely all I needed was a fitting with one connection on one side and two on the other? Simple. It wasn’t. I found an old television-style splitter in a box, added enough adapters to make the whole arrangement look vaguely professional and connected everything. Reception was poor, the readings didn’t make much sense, and transmitting on one radio made the other behave as though someone had thrown a wet blanket over it. Nothing actually smoked, thankfully. It could have. Look, I’ll be honest… at that point I didn’t properly understand what an antenna diplexer did. I’d heard the term, but in my head it was mixed up with splitters, antenna switches and several other little metal boxes that all seemed to have one connector too many. That afternoon sorted out the confusion rather quickly. What an Antenna D...

  The contact that finally changed my mind wasn’t some rare station on a faraway island. It was another Australian operator I’d worked plenty of times before. On my usual antenna, his signal was comfortable. Not spectacular, but solid enough that we could talk without repeating every second sentence. Then I switched to the vertical. He nearly disappeared. I switched back. There he was again. That should have settled the argument, shouldn’t it? The base station antenna was clearly better and the vertical was a waste of aluminium. Except that about half an hour later, a much more distant station came through more clearly on the vertical. Not stronger by a huge margin, but cleaner and easier to copy. I sat there flicking between the two antennas like a bloke trying to choose a horse after the race had already started. That’s the trouble with antenna comparisons. Everybody wants a clean answer. Amateur radio rarely gives you one. Base Station or Vertical — Does It Even Matter That Muc...