Kenwood: Kenwood TM-V71A & MFJ 916B Duplexer

[theoleman]

I just got this MFJ duplexer. My Kenwood seems to perform better with quarter wave antennas individually than a dual band. This is for my personal vehicle. I went the lesser cost route to get some experience with a duplexer and antenna combinations.

The question is the length of the coax from the duplexer to the antennas. Does the coax need to be the same length for both antennas or a wavelength of the antennas band? I must not be googling the correct phrase as I have found little info on this topic.

Thanks.

TOM

 

[mmckenna]

Coax length doesn't matter.

As for it working better with quarter wave antennas as compared to a dual band antenna, keep in mind that dual band antennas come with some costs. You didn't say what model dual band antenna you were using, but there are cases where higher gain antennas can not work as well as lower gain antennas.

I used to run a TM-D710 and I used a similar duplexer/diplexer unit to split out to two antennas. I always found that quarter wave antennas work better for me than higher gain antennas do.

 

[wrath]

The only time it matters is if you are co-phasing antennas on the same band ,just use the shortest run of the best coax you can afford.

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