Rat tail/ tiger tail

[WSGH675]

So just wondering has anyone try to do a rat tail/tiger tail on there gmrs handheld radio and if so did they get any results 

[Socalgmrs]

Sure a 6.5” 12g wire with a ring terminal inter the antenna will help but I never found it helps enough.  I just use 771 antennas and have no issues with tx distance.  With a short and stubby antenna they do help somewhat. 

[73blazer]

If you mean a counterpoise , I tried this on a few different HT's, no discernible difference in any department, noise/quieting, distances nothing. I could measure on a meter the receiving end was a bit better from the HT transmitting with the counterpoise, but for real world humans, there was no difference.

I was glad it didn't work, because who really wants to walk around with a giant piece of wire hanging off their HT?

[tweiss3]

At UHF, there isn't much discernable improvement, the radio body is more than enough counterpoise to the antenna. Now, when you get to low band VHF (50MHz) a tigertail counterpoise has the potential to provide significant improvement to compromised antenna systems. 

[SteveShannon]

A friend of mine did some testing, including using an external microphone so he could measure the effect of the tiger tail unaffected by coupling with his body. He actually felt that his radio worked better without the wire. 
I have never tried it.

[Lscott]

  On 3/25/2025 at 2:17 PM, SteveShannon said:

A friend of mine did some testing, including using an external microphone so he could measure the effect of the tiger tail unaffected by coupling with his body. He actually felt that his radio worked better without the wire. 
I have never tried it.

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Not that shocking a result. At the frequencies used by GMRS,UHF band, the usual quarter wave rubber duck antenna is only about 6 inches long. A median sized HT's body is about that size and would provide a reasonably good ground plane, needs to be about a quarter wave in size, for the quarter wave rubber duck antenna typically used.

On VHF I would expect to see some measurable improvement.

[tweiss3]

On another note, I recently bought a Motorola HT-1250 for 6 meter use, and I needed to replace the antenna. The replacement came with instructions, and there were 2 different cut lines, 1 for with a RSM attached and 1 without. It was about 0.75"-0.5" different across the band. For those wondering, this is a helical antenna designed to cover 30MHz to 50MHz with a bandwidth of maybe 2MHz when cut.

[tweiss3]

  On 3/25/2025 at 2:45 PM, Lscott said:

On VHF I would expect to see some measurable improvement.

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This is probable for many of the ham or single band antennas, but some of the magic in the "all-band" HT antennas doesn't appear to be improved by a tiger tail. Though, to be honest, the radio bodies are significantly larger and involve much more metal than say a FT3DR or Woxun GMRS radio. 

[AdmiralCochrane]

I have tried it on a 2m/70cm ham radio with noticeable success.  There was perceptible increase in reception and transmit with the tiger tail pointed in the direction of the other station and 180° away and null or reduction at 90°.  No real noticeable improvement just letting it hang.  This was with a Baofeng UV3 with a Nagoya tri band antenna and the larger battery.   It didn't make the Baofeng as good as my Kenwood TH6A without