On Tuesday, September 18, 2018 at 7:07:49 AM UTC-4, wrote:
I plan on installing my Yaesau FT 867 in my car. The car was a former state police vehicle and so holes were already cut in both the middle of the trunk and the middle of the roof. I have a bunch of NMO type antenna bases around here that cover these frequencies and I would like to use these antennas for this. I have used these antennas before but only for one specific frequency. It has been my experience that these antennas tune rather sharply.. Since both of these bands are 4 MHZ wide what frequency should I cut the antennas for? Center frequency would be easy but wouldn't an antenna cut for 52 MHZ have very poor SWR when used at 50 MHZ? The rig has both low and high band outputs. I'm not sure what I should do. Thanks for any input on this. Lenny

Interesting that you mentioned Dave that some of these base loaded antennas have the bases inductively coupled to the whip. I have had to replace a few of these bases for some of my commercial customers who's antennas got smacked by a tree branch or some other stationary object. So I had a chance to autopsy the broken bases. It looked like a coil of number 10 or 12 wire. And these did tune very sharply. This may not be a good idea. The 857 is known for blowing finals so an intentional mismatch would be fool hardy. Since I hang out with the military guys at the ham fests maybe as you mentioned I'll tune the 6 meter antenna for 51 and mark the whip for other freqs. The two meter I don't know.. The car is in the shop now so I can't play around with it but when it comes back I'll do a bit of experimenting.

The other thing is and I hear you about the antenna tuner but doesn't a tuner match the rig to the tuner rather than the load? And while I can appreciate protecting the finals but then what does that say for maximum power transfer? Would "you can't have your cake and eat it" be a good analogy here? Lenny