rubber duck

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, I recent bought a duck for RR band scanning when mobile (a Smiley 5/8 duck for RR). Problem is, I needed a 90° elbow to use with my Uniden SDS200 - the BNC on that is horizontal (more or less). The elbow I got (NOT from Smiley) is rather loose at...

I really hate the short rubber duck antennas for VHF and have always opted for the 2 ft long flex "wire" antennas. I volunteer for CAP that does search and rescue and when you in the middle of noplace and there is no aircraft operating in the area having a good antenna is really nice. *Tried...

Hi all, Thanks to a friend in my radio club, I'm now the proud owner of a used 396XT. Physical condition is a tad rough but that's fine since it works 100%. The only thing is the rubber duck antenna is cracked all the way through. Before I order an OEM replacement, I'm wondering if there's any...

Here is an easy little project for an external scanner antenna with a few parts from the junk bin. This antenna is fine for somewhat local stations; for distant station scanning a tuned J-Pole or dipole antenna would work much better. And of course, the higher you can get this little guy up...

I contacted Uniden a few days ago and got a response yesterday, the only problem is that the antenna will apparently give you "around 3db" of gain. The question is what that is measured in, and how much better a 1/2λ dipole would be. Full question & response quoted below.

I have a Yaesu VX-6r and still have the rubber duck antenna on it that I would like to replace. While I have looked for new antennas online, I would really like to make my own if possible. Does anyone know of good DIY plans, schematics, or websites that show how to do this. Preferably ones...