Marine VHF Radios Antenna for Boat, for Horizon Icom Cobra ham Radios, 7meters RG-58U Cable, Adjustable Ratchet, Nails

It works very well with my vhf radio

Perfect fit

Muy buen producto

Good replacement antenna for my aging system. The cable was plenty long enough to make the installation easy. I’m getting better signal strength and reception but that might be because the old antenna was faulty. Over all thus is a better price than I would have paid.

Short range

Just what I was looking for. I have been rebuilding a 1988 Sunbird center console and am just finishing up with rewiring and installing updated components. I didn't have a nice flat surface to mount this so I used some u-bolts and have it attached to my T-top. I ran the cable down one of the legs and into my console where I have my radio mounted. This is the perfect size for my boat. when it is folded down for travel it doesn't extend past the t-top frame. But when I put it on the water I can quickly adjust swivel to stand it straight up for better performance and range.

This is a good short vhf antenna. It does not have the range of an 8 foot but sometimes there are size limitations. I have a 4 footer on my small fishing boat and one on the arch of my other boat where an 8 foot wouldn't be feasible. This is good quality at a good price. I recommend it.

It's no surprise that most people, even those who manufacture and sell antennas, don't entirely understand them. Such is the case with this antenna. This is the top half of a half-wave vertical antenna.The bottom half is called "radials" or a counterpoise, and generally take the form of horizontal metal pieces. That part is as necessary as the vertical part of the antenna. You don't have a counterpoise on a car antenna because the car is usually made of steel, and the electrically conductive steel roof that the antenna mounts in acts as the counterpoise. But what about a boat? They're generally made of fiberglass and won't act as a counterpoise because fiberglass is not electrically conductive. So, the coaxial cable from the antenna to your radio acts as the counterpoise. This, however, causes problems because the cable doesn't go in all horizontal directions like the radials on an antenna that has them. It only goes in one direction, and the antenna pattern will be distorted by that, with the result that the antenna will work better in some directions than others.A good marine antenna has a ground terminal on the bottom, which can be connected to counterpoise wires, which can even run inside of the hull but should be the same length as the vertical part of the antenna and should go out in all horizontal directions. This unit is missing that.So, what is the counterpoise on a walkie-talkie antenna? It's your body! And if that works, this antenna will be able to make contacts too, it just won't do it as well as a properly designed one could have.Also, the 3.5 dB gain figure is aspirational. In practical applications you'd be lucky to get unity gain. And don't rely on SWR figures. They don't tell you how well the antenna radiates a signal, only how well it matches the impedance of the transmitter.