JD,
I am going to suggest a 7 inch tall 146/220/440 MHz tri-band antenna that some folks are going to say is all smoke-and-mirrors and a waste of money. I have one of these antennas and I will tell you that in a test I ran the other weekend, this 7 inch tall tri-band antenna outperformed an 18.75 inch 146/440 MHz dual-band antenna. Here is a picture of the two antennas side-by-side (stuck on my Astron power supply for this photo --
NOT the configuration used for the test!).
The 7 inch tall 146/220/440 MHz tri-band antenna is manufactured 100% in the U.S.A. by
COMPACtenna based in Ohio. This is a small outfit (as many ham radio manufacturers are) but after talking with the designer of this antenna on quite a few occasions by telephone and eMail, I am convinced that they can deliver on their claims. This is backed up by my own in-field testing where the tri-band COMPACtenna received distant repeaters a good one to two S-units better than my "trustworthy" dual-band antenna. Over the coming winter and into next spring, I do plan to do more testing with these antennas but I do expect to see similar results.
The 7 inch tall 146/220/440 MHz tri-band COMPACtenna is available from the vendors listed on
this webpage.
So I hope this does not turn into a "put-down" thread of COMPACtenna by those folks that have neither personally tested this antenna nor spoken directly with the antenna designer. Just do a search here on Radio Reference and you can find
that thread. Add your negative comments there. Please reserve (and respect) this thread for true testimonials (good or bad) from folks that have the qualifications stated in this paragraph. And I might add that I have a Masters Degree and my area of study was Antennas and RF Propagation. I don't "buy into" so-called smoke-and-mirror products without a due diligence investigation. This may be cutting-edge technology but smoke-and-mirrors it is not.
73, Dave K4EET