Yes, dump it.....
Now, let's figure out which antenna you should get. The biggest antenna
isn't the one you need, or want....
Is this antenna mounted on a lay-over base or fixed mounted? If it has a
lay-over base, does it also have an extra mount to hold it up on the side
of the cabin, for instance? How much do you have to lay it down? As you
probably trailer it, laying over another monsterous 8' long antenna is
just another chore you probably don't need.
I'm looking at the 21' walkaround's picture on Striper's webpage. Nice
boat, by the way....(c;
Ok, what would you think of putting an antenna on top of the hardtop that
only sticks up 40", is stainless steel, not fragile plastic, mounted
through a 3/4" hole so there's no coax exposed to the weather? Is there
an overhead radio enclosure under the top? If so, we can use just a
jumper cable between the radio and the antenna, which has a standard SO-
239/U female coax connector sticking down into the cabin. NO coax
losses, nothing exposed to passengers, weather, corrosion....great, easy
install.
http://www.metzcommunication.com/manta6.htm
It won't split, crack, weather, produce fiberglass shards to cut your
hands after the gelcoat weathers off and you can move it from boat to
boat for years. It requires no ground or ground plane. You can hold it
in your hand and it will produce a great signal. Because its cable is
SEPARATE from the antenna, when the cable breaks, we replace the cable,
not the whole antenna, like a Shakespeare. How stupid to have coax
potted into a base....idiots.
Why not a monstrous 8db antenna? Pattern....radiation pattern.
The 1/2 wave little Manta's radiation pattern looks like a donut laying
on the table...the table being the sea surface. If you tilt the donut as
the boat rolls and pitches, a good part of the donut still points to the
spoon laying on the other end of the table, the target radio system
you're trying to talk to. Now, the bigshot, high gain antenna gets its
signal gain from flattening out the donut as if you drove the car over
it. All this gain is out the ends of a very flat radiation donut,
perpendicular to the antenna. If the antenna rolls to port, for
instance, the signal to port is pointing into the sea a short ways from
the antenna. The signal to starboard is pointing towards the sky.
Neither of those signals are going to the targets off the beams. If the
boat/antenna pitches, the signal isn't pointed at the targets off bow and
stern. The fat donut of the 1/2 wave antennas lets lots of signal hit
the target's antenna, even if it's pitched or rolled over 30 degrees.
My last little boat with this antenna in it was a Sea Rayder 16' jetboat.
The Manta was mounted to a plastic handle in the bow just inside the
gunwale and the top of it was about 4' off the water. Range on 25 watts
was about 20 miles in normal conditions....except, of course, if we were
jumping wakes...(c;
If you don't like it, simply return it to Metz. I bet you'll keep it.
You'll hardly remember it's there...going under a bridge, for instance.
If it hits anything, it will bend back horizontal and spring right back
to vertical.
