Skip to main content

Maldol MH-510 Antenna

Maldol MH-510 Antenna The Yaesu VX-8R FM transceiver comes with a stock antenna (YHA-65) consisting of the “Base Antenna” - recommended for operation above 50 MHz - and the “Extender Element” for frequencies below 50 MHz. With this antenna, I was receiving signals from only a couple of repeaters, and that too restricted to certain parts of my house. The N6NFI repeater (Frequency 145.230 MHz, Shift –600 KHz, PL 100 Hz) was the one with the best signal, and I could hear some nets like the SCARES weekly net, all on the 2m VHF band. I also had very little success transmitting indoors with the stock antenna. Outdoors, the transceiver worked pretty well with the stock antenna.

Having seen good reviews for the Maldol MH-510 antenna at eHam.net, I decided to give that a shot. The antenna is for 6m VHF, 2m VHF and 70cm UHF. It is 20.75” tall and is thin and flexible. Gain is advertised as 0/0/.32 dBi and the MH-510 can handle up to 10 watts. The antenna terminates to an SMA and fits directly with the VX-8R. With this antenna, I can actually receive quite a few 70cm UHF signals indoors. Definitely an improvement over the stock antenna! One obvious disadvantage though is that the antenna is quite tall and therefore not exactly suitable for a handheld radio; but that’s not much of an issue for indoor use.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FCC Aproves Sirius-XM Merger

This has been a long time coming but finally the FCC has finally approved the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio with XM Satellite Radio . The combined entity is pretty much a monopoly in the satellite radio space but they are still competing with terrestrial radio. Either way, their stocks, NASDAQ:SIRI and NASDAQ:XMSR should get a good boost on Monday. Yahoo! Finance Quote for SIRI Quote for XMSR

Lead Tide SIM Reader

I recently came across a cheap little device for reading SIM cards . It was available from Meritline for less than USD 5 with free shipping. Curious to see what it was like, I ordered one. The device came in a small package along with a mini CD containing drivers. The packaging advertised the device as the LEAD TIDE Sim reader . Like most things these days, it's made in China. The device has a USB 1.1 interface. There was no product code or number anywhere on the packaging. Installing the drivers for the device turned out to be harder than I expected. The mini CD's autorun installed some stuff but Microsoft Windows XP couldn't install any suitable driver for the device. The mini-CD had several top level directories with what appeared to be product codes but I couldn't match any to the device itself since it had no product code. Google searches revealed that I wasn't alone in my endeavors to get the device working . Further digging revealed pointers to some thir

Getting Mailvelope on Chrome to use GnuPG on macOS

Mailvelope is a browser add-on that helps use GPG encryption and signing on webmail systems like Gmail. Here are the steps on macOS (tested with "Big Sur") to get Mailvelope to use the GnuPG backend. Install gpgme via Homebrew: brew install gpgme This will install gpgme-json in /usr/local/bin by default.  Create a file called gpgmejson.json in  "~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts" with the following contents: {     "name": "gpgmejson",     "description": "Integration with GnuPG",     "path": "/usr/local/bin/gpgme-json",     "type": "stdio",     "allowed_origins": [         "chrome-extension://kajibbejlbohfaggdiogboambcijhkke/"     ] } Now in Mailvelope > Options > General , GnuPG will show up as the encryption backend.