B-Tech Nagoya NMO-200C 38.5" Antenna NMO Mount Dual Band VHF, UHF (155/460Mhz), Commercial Tuned Antenna (GMRS, MURS) (Requires NMO Mount)

Excellent quality antenna. Base is very strong. Holds tight even on rough trails and off-road.

Works great with all frequencies as described. Also using this with my B-Tech 50v2 50watt transceiver and it picks up repeaters and signals from well over 100+ miles away with a clear signal.

When I received this antenna it was tuned to 150 MHz and 450 MHz. I tuned this to GMRS frequencies by trimming 1" off the BOTTOM element. Not the top element. The bottom element is now 11 3/16" long and the antenna length overall is 33 3/4” (measured from the top of the rubber boot to the top of the antenna) It is now resonant in GMRS frequencies with a sub 1.2:1 SWR. This makes the VHF band tuned to 155 MHz to 160 MHz, which is totally useless but irrelevant for what I'm using this antenna for. Within seconds of tuning this antenna I made contact 43 miles away... And the antenna was sitting on the table in my house (with a metal roof) and I was using 8 watts of output. I was also using the Nagoya ground plane kit (GPK-01). Pretty good!

I admit I'm not the world's best radio guy, but I think I installed it right. I used pretty high-quality RG400 cable, made sure it had a clean metal base that's properly grounded to my jeep's chassis, even used dielectric grease to seal it up. Out of the factory, I was getting an SWR around 1.8 at 70cm and over 2 at 2m. After chopping several inches off the whip, I was able to get 70cm between 1.0 and 1.2, which is about as good as I could hope for. But 2m still hovered around 2.6, which is pretty terrible.It's not a deal-breaker for me since I never use 2m anyway, and once it's dialed in, its performance at 70cm is superb. I've been picking up some impressively distant stations with it, including a repeater that's 70+ miles away; one that I've never been able to hear before, let alone hit.Still, I would personally consider it an either/or antenna. Tune it for VHF or UHF, but don't expect both bands out of it.Couple other notes: My first antenna shipped missing several of the grub screws used to hold the coil to the mast, which meant I had to send it back for a replacement. The screw threads are also really soft and easy to strip, so keep that in mind when tightening them. The ability to fold the antenna out of the way is SUPER handy. Mine is mounted behind the spare tire on my Jeep's tailgate, and with the old antenna, I couldn't keep the tailgate closed and the glass open without hitting it. With this antenna, I just fold the mast out of the way.

The antenna works pretty well with my 20w mobile radio. I don't have it in a very good ground plane part of my truck bed so I ran a ground wire from the NMO mount to the chassis. It gets good reception and I was recently able to test it with a GMRS operator 20 miles away via repeater. Simplex isn't exceptional in the major city of Los Angeles etc. but it's not a deal breaker. Offroading with this will be fun and I like that the antenna is pretuned for GMRS specific use.