Analysing Antennas
I was curious as to how good some of my antennas are. So, down the rabbit hole of google we go...
I discovered that a fairly cheap VNA existed for the low cost of $49 from amazon, called the NanoVNA:
This allowed logging of various antennas into SWR graphs. The results of these tests are as follows across the 2m band.
Yaesu HT Stock Antenna
Yaesu stock antenna mid frequncy is 2.71 vSWR
The HT Signal Stick
The HT Signal Stick antenna mid frequncy is 5.5 vSWR
The HT Signal Stick with Tail
I added a 50cm tail to see if would lower the vSWR and if so, how much by. Turns out I was pleasently surprised at the increase in performance that such a simple modification can achieve. The vSWR went from a average of 5.5 to 2.14.
The Counterfit Nagoya
The counterfit Nagoya antenna is a fairly flat 5.29 which is great if its a genuine output power but does cause supision if a dummy load is being used.
