Nagoya 72g ground plane

[WSAR436]

Hello all looking to mag mount a Nagoya 72g to a metal hand railing on my upper deck so that it remains portable. I have a 2nd 72g mounted to the top of my 4runner and it’s working great with that roof as a ground plane. Does anybody have experience with this mag mount antenna on a metal hand railing or something similar? The railing is 20ft long and wide enough to just cover the mag base. Thank you 

 

Mike 

wsar436

[OffRoaderX]

I have one mounted on a cookie-sheet in the window.  You only need a few inches of metal around the base, and it doesn't even need to be solid-metal, it can be strips. There is also an inexpensive ground-plane mount you can by that will do the job, but i dont think the hand-railing alone will do the job unless it's at least 6-10 inches wide.

My 72G on the cookie-sheet works fine - it has an SWR below 2 and I can hit repeaters 70 miles away and talk on simplex with HT's ~20 miles away.. YMMV based on terrain.

[WRYZ926]

I agree that a hand rail is probably not wide enough. A cheap metal cookie sheet will work better. I have not tried the ground plane kits so can't comment one way or the other.

[WSAR436]

Thanks fellas for the advice I’m going to give it a go test swr before and after on railing take pictures and get back to you with results 

[WRPL700]

7 hours ago, WSAR436 said:

Thanks fellas for the advice I’m going to give it a go test swr before and after on railing take pictures and get back to you with results 

That sounds great.... interested in seeing your results!

[WSAR436]

Hello fellas tested swr with radio and 72g Nagoya mag mounted to roof of 4 runner. Repeater channels at 1.01 and simplex channels at 1.67 roughly. What do you guys think about that? also why does it change between simplex and repeater frequencies? Sorry in advance for a noob question. 

[SteveShannon]

7 minutes ago, WSAR436 said:

Hello fellas tested swr with radio and 72g Nagoya mag mounted to roof of 4 runner. Repeater channels at 1.01 and simplex channels at 1.67 roughly. What do you guys think about that? also why does it change between simplex and repeater frequencies? Sorry in advance for a noob question. 

Those are just fine. 
Repeater frequencies transmit at 467.xxx MHz rather than 462.xxx MHz, so the SWR changes.  But either SWR is just fine. You’ll never be able to tell the difference when using the radio  

 

[WSAR436]

So after testing on vehicle and the metal hand railing overall average swr was 1.35 on railing and a little higher give or take frequency in the vehicle. Nagoya 72g and kenwood 8180h. 

[WRUU653]

7 minutes ago, WSAR436 said:

So after testing on vehicle and the metal hand railing overall average swr was 1.35 on railing and a little higher give or take frequency in the vehicle. Nagoya 72g and kenwood 8180h. 

Outstanding that’s pretty good for sticking on a hand railing. 

[OffRoaderX]

25 minutes ago, WSAR436 said:

overall average swr was 1.35

Surprisingly good!

[Socalgmrs]

Swr may be fine but how does it transmit and receive?  You have great line of site with tailgate view how far are you able to get out?  

[WSAR436]

Yes I thought so, moving it around a bit I got as low as 1.1 and as high as 1.6. Found the sweet spot and will transmit from there. Sounds great and the farthest repeater in my area is at 36miles crystal clear transmission. But I was getting to that super clear with 5watt handheld and lower gain antenna. 

[WSAR436]

Well I thought I’d just leave this here because I respect all of your opinions. I purchased a few uv-5RM because what not have a radio that transmits on the popular ham frequencies and gmrs same price more wattage. The rub is getting an antenna to perform well though out all the bands. I tested the abree 771 it came with, Nagoya 771, Nagoya 320a all with less that stellar performance throughout all bands and before I settled for less I randomly decided to screw every damn antenna I owned into the radio and swr meter. To my surprise the long 15 inch whip that came with my uv-5g plus was killing it not only on GMrs uhf, but also 2 meter, 1.25 meter and 70cm. I was blown away. Almost all frequencies performing better than antennas designed for ham. Just a little info I thought you guys should know. 

[dosw]

I thought I'd follow up here regarding the Nagoya Ground Plane kit. From what I can tell (having ordered and assembled it), it suffers from two shortcomings that make it pretty much defective by design.

 

• Any NMO antenna from my collection (MXTA25, MXTA26, and a Nagoya 5/8ths wave 17" antenna) cannot fully tighten down against the NMO mount because the ground plane rods are in the way of tightening it down.
• There is no backing plate around the NMO threads, so every NMO antenna that has an o-ring around its base to prevent water intrusion has nowhere to form a seal. Actually the base of any NMO antenna I've seen should press against the perimeter of the NMO mount. But in the case of this kit, it presses only against the ground plane rods.

Therefore, it can't be fully tightened, and even if it could be, it would not be a weatherproof seal.

This is for the Nagoya GPK-01 ground plane kit.

So this kit is probably getting sent back. Has anyone found an NMO ground plane kit that would be appropriate for a sailboat masthead? I've searched high and low. One that allows water intrusion can't be it.

[Socalgmrs]

Why not just use any one of the many ground plane antennas and be done with it.    They make a great 48” 7.2db gain antenna coupled with a 50w radio should easily do 100miles or more line of site.