Leaderboard

This whole thread hurts and is an absolute waste of time for the actual results. You would have more loss in the phasing harnesses than you would gain. Put up the DB420 and enjoy the hell out of a kicka** antenna.

Perhaps a better idea is to find a group of users and split the cost from the beginning as a group. Better to have the group up front than Putting up the system and hoping others come in to cover the cost. People are more willing to pay for something they had a stake in than finding people willing to pay for the service afterword.

Mains (462.550, 462.575...) are 25KHz spacing. Bandwidth is 20KHz (2.5kHz guard on either side). Just set it for Wideband and it will use 5KHz deviation and you'll be fine. ERP is not the concern, the FCC spec is a max of 50 watts at the connector, so any electrical gain in the antenna design is fine. I run a 1/4 wave (0 gain) on vehicle, but my repeater antenna is a ASP805 which is 10dB gain. My output is 50 watts, but my ERP is something like 300. Rule is 50 at the radio (or out of the Duplexor). http://antennas.ca/calc_ERP.htm

Antenna “Gain” might reduce your S/N ratio, especially in the case of a directional antenna, because you will be receiving less noise and competing signals. But, it will not impact the signal strength of the desired signal. In the case of an omni directional antenna, the impact is really minor since you really don’t hear much fromdirectly overhead or below the antennna.