Larsen NMO 2/70C Mobile Antenna

Larsen NMO 2/70C Dual Band Antenna

About a month ago I decided I don't want to deal with magnet mounts or trunk lip mounts anymore and I asked Claude VE2YI for help. So one Friday morning I showed up at his door and one hour later I had two permanent NMO mounts installed on my car, one on the roof and one on the trunk.

Using my old TRAM 1180 antenna, the tests showed a slight improvement both on RX and TX using the new mounts.

The next step was to replace my "old" dual band antenna with something better and after some online research I choose the Larsen NMO 2/70C antenna, the one with a closed phasing coil. Cliff VE2YU got me a nice discount from Peter at HRO, he ordered the antenna for me and a few days later it was already installed on my trunk.

I have to admit, in the beginning  I wasn't very impressed with the "look and feel" of it. It looked like my old "budget" antenna, the whip was not as sturdy as the one on my UHF commercial antenna (PCTEL MUF4505, NGP)...

Out of the box the SWR was about 1.8:1 on 146.160 MHz (input of the VE2RMP repeater) and about 1.6:1 on  448.550 MHz (input of the VA2RMP repeater). Not too impressive for a "factory tuned" antenna. With Cliff's help and his SWR analyzer, we trimmed it a bit and I got the SWR down to 1.4 both on VHF and UHF. Not perfect but tolerable for me.

After testing it for about a week, I can definitely say that it makes a big difference compared to my initial setup. The reception improved dramatically in my noisy spots (Bell Center, Turcot Yards, South Shore) and I can make it into the repeater less noisy from the same spots.

My conclusion: I'm really pleased with the performance and the look of this antenna. Oh, and I think it's a bit lighter than the others (Diamond, Comet, etc .)