I just wanted to do a long term follow up on my antenna selection, mobile, primarily for VHF. I finally got my Landcruiser back on the road (back off-road to be accurate) and just bought a Comet CA-2X4SR NMO. I repaired my K515SNMO Diamond Roof Rack mount (which had the cable and the actual NMO mount part ripped out) using a Wilson NMO mount for 3/8” holes – Diamond sells a replacement cable and mount for it but the cable is a bit short (10 feet and I need 13 feet), and the Wilson was 1/3 the price. I actually like the Wilson, cable seems better and it is sturdy once mounted. Took a bit of grinding to make it fit but not too bad.
Anyway the reason I went for the CA-2X4SRNMO was even though it is advertised as needing a ground plan, if you look at the actual specs it is 2 x 1/2 wave on 2 meters and 3 x 5/8 wave on 70 cm. Since I usually only use VHF (but want the option of other bands) I thought maybe it would work well for 2 m without a good ground plane and only suffer on UHF. Nobody at the stores really knew so I gave it a try.
First impressions are it seems pretty good. In my albeit flawed APRS test this was the result:
View attachment 162746
So technically the CA-2X4SR could be the best yet. It works on VHF very well under most condition, better I would say then my SBB5 style 1/2 wave I was using before. So maybe for VHF it doesn't need a great ground plane. But I was a bit disappointed in its performance in deep canyon-like terrain – the picture doesn’t really show it but on other parts of the drive it failed to hit repeaters that the 1/4 wave and maybe even the SBB5 single element 1/2 wave could.
Given how I have to mount it, I think I will stick with the CA-2X4SR for a while, and carry my 1/4 wave mag mount just in case.