Miracle Antenna w/counterpoise clip
I've had very little success tuning the Miracle Antenna for 70cm (Ham UHF) operation. The FT-817 complains about high SWR regardless of my efforts to adjust the length for 3/4th wave. However, after clipping a short lead to the shield I've been able to get it into "safe" territory with regard to SWR - at least, under the radio's threshold for the SWR alert. I don't know what the panel meter is calibrated against, but out of its full range, it's 4 bars on FM at 5 watts and 3 bars at the lowest power rating. I think there are 8 bars total. Anyway, it's very touchy.
I left my rubber duck antenna at Resistor and probably won't have it in hand for a few days, so I was especially interested to get this up and running. The product is sold as UHF friendly, with reasonable performance on UHF (< 2:1 standing wave ratio) so I suspect there is a bit more study required to tune it but otherwise it's possible to do so.
In the meantime, while it offends my sensibility to do so, I'll leave the back cover off and use this counterpoise. The rear radio panel has a lug for grounding, but clipping the counterpoise to this or the shield does not help the tuning (or moves it further out in length than I've been checking.)
Note that with this tuner, the antenna detent for VHF is very important - it's the pass-through circuit on the rotor, and is followed by a couple detents which place the wiper over a nonconductive area.
When time permits (and it's going to be awhile) I'll work out something more sensible.
KD4ISF
Miracle Antenna w/counterpoise clip
I've had very little success tuning the Miracle Antenna for 70cm (Ham UHF) operation. The FT-817 complains about high SWR regardless of my efforts to adjust the length for 3/4th wave. However, after clipping a short lead to the shield I've been able to get it into "safe" territory with regard to SWR - at least, under the radio's threshold for the SWR alert. I don't know what the panel meter is calibrated against, but out of its full range, it's 4 bars on FM at 5 watts and 3 bars at the lowest power rating. I think there are 8 bars total. Anyway, it's very touchy.
I left my rubber duck antenna at Resistor and probably won't have it in hand for a few days, so I was especially interested to get this up and running. The product is sold as UHF friendly, with reasonable performance on UHF (< 2:1 standing wave ratio) so I suspect there is a bit more study required to tune it but otherwise it's possible to do so.
In the meantime, while it offends my sensibility to do so, I'll leave the back cover off and use this counterpoise. The rear radio panel has a lug for grounding, but clipping the counterpoise to this or the shield does not help the tuning (or moves it further out in length than I've been checking.)
Note that with this tuner, the antenna detent for VHF is very important - it's the pass-through circuit on the rotor, and is followed by a couple detents which place the wiper over a nonconductive area.
When time permits (and it's going to be awhile) I'll work out something more sensible.
KD4ISF