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Let me drop a little RF theory... first, the Ford antenna is basically a quarter-wave at 98MHz, the center of the FM broadcast band. It provides a very flat and wide radiation angle, and no gain. That's what an RF guy would consider a "minimally acceptable antenna".
Where the .50cal antenna is concerned, I suspect they have zero knowledge of RF theory. They slapped a connector on an antenna and called it good. Thus, it sucks mightily. The Amazon antenna may, electrically, be tuned for 98MHz. However, coiled up like that does two things - decreases effective bandwidth and screws with radiation angles.
Fire, I don't know what radio system y'all operate on... if it's VHF, it's relatively close in frequency (typically 150-160MHz) to the broadcast band. The antenna on your portable is the same way - a big coil internally, sometimes with some other components for "matching" (this is more common in multiband radios like the APX8000 and XL200). When doing loss calculations, we typically figure a portable radio (with its antenna similar to your Amazon antenna) as having 10dB of loss. Worn on the hip close to the body, we calculate 30dB loss.
A fairly typical receiver is going to be something like 0.25uV for 12dB SINAD (basically, the amount of voltage present on the receiving antenna to produce a signal that is "comprehensible"... not great.) For an FM broadcast receiver, you really want 3uV at a minimum... or about -97.8dBm. Changing to your Amazon antenna and accepting the 10dB loss means -87.8dBm or about 9.8uV - or a little more than 3 times the signal required. The .50cal thing... $deity only knows.
By the way, some of this same theory goes into the Baltimore study of where to wear your radio - under your coat or in your pocket.
Actually, the first antenna was a Stubby - I never put much faith in the .50cal antennas, & the only reason I bought the Stubby was because it was in the sales section at a cheap price.
I know all to well about issues arising from VHF signals / antennas. At one time I installed all of our departments radios & maintained the fleet / paging inventory (major pain in the backside)
For the first 25+ years of my service we were on VHF (154MHz), but as I was slowing down, the county was moving everything over to 700MHz except paging - that stayed on 154MHz
I'm not sure what frequencies they are using now, but I do know many departments complained about not receiving tones when they were paged out, so they had Motorola come out and do a study, which resulted in a new paging system & several new repeaters being installed.
When it comes to locking Lug Nuts there appears to be two camps - Those who say they are a must have, & those who say they are a waste of time.
I have decided to join the guys in the First Camp, they may not prevent theft if the thief is determined to get the tires & rims but hopefully they'll slow him down enough that he gets caught!
I went a slightly different route... knowing all the problems, I swapped out for McGard spline drive lug nuts (did her Explorer, will do my new 150 shortly). They don't have all the shearing-off problems that the locking nuts do, and I suspect most thieves aren't going to carry a spline drive tool with them.
I went a slightly different route... knowing all the problems, I swapped out for McGard spline drive lug nuts (did her Explorer, will do my new 150 shortly). They don't have all the shearing-off problems that the locking nuts do, and I suspect most thieves aren't going to carry a spline drive tool with them.
Interesting, I had never heard of spline drive lug nuts...which I only paid $34.00 for these, but still it may be something i give another look at in the future.
Discount tire sent me the spline drive black lugs with my wheels.
They are required on some aftermarket wheels because, even with the tool, they're substantially thinner than the hex drive stuff.
The big trick is making sure you have the tool when you need to pull one. I put one in the vehicle with the rest of the tire kit, and another in my toolbox at home.
I got spline drive with my wheels from Discount Tire also. I also keep 6 of my factory lug nuts in a zip lock bag in with my jack kit in case I need to use the spare on a factory wheel.
Spline drive Gorillas here; two sets... two of one pattern on each of the rear wheels, the next set on the front. Carry the spline key sockets in the truck with copies of the key code in the truck and at home. The spline drive lug nuts look like they'd be at home with the Coneheads.
06-18-2018, 06:05 PM
