Just looking for some fairly rugged VHF antenna suggestions. Some friends off mine folded the whip on their Baja truck over a tree branch and have been looking for some replacement options and since that kind of abuse isn't what I'm familiar with, I thought I'd ask here.
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Back in the day, the Colorado State Patrol did test on all the available antennas for use on their patrol cars, mounted in the center of the roof. They tested for ruggedness and for measured gain. The gain tests were done on the antenna measurement field at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) in Boulder. With around 2.7db of measured gain, the Larsen NMO 150 won hands down. The whips were silver plated so the antenna's skin radiated well. As they corroded, there was little effect as silver salt conducted nearly as well as silver did.
As for ruggedness, the only NMO150s I ever replaced for damage to the loading coil was on a road grader for the city of Aurora. It graded alleys and stood about 9 feet off the ground. Trees damaged two coils, the only two coils I ever replaced in 40 years of communications. Replaced it with a Sinclair Excaliber railroad antenna that lasted the life of the grader.
Whips knocked out of the base is an issue, but still rare. Putting a flat on the rod where the set screw attaches helps with that.
Our Mobile Command truck is 13' 6" tall and all the 150 and 450 roof top antennas are NMO 2/70 SH with the spring base. They have been trimming trees in Denver for 5 years now without a failure. Cannot say the same thing about the satellite dish on the same truck.