TIGER TAIL AND YOUR HT

 It's been a while since I've added anything new. I've been busy hamming and doing very little in antenna design and test. Most recently I've done some preliminary testing of tiger tails. A tiger tail is a quarter wave length of wire attached to the ground side of the antenna connection of a handy talky. It is left to hang off the radio and provides the other half or ground half of the antenna.

I have yet to test my findings On The Air (OTA). We've had a rather extreme winter here in Utah as have many other parts of the country. So OTA testing is waiting for better weather. However, here's my findings so far.

My first encounter with a tiger tail a few years back was to attach one to my Icom T7h with the factory provided rubber ducky antenna. The result were not good. I had a friend, now SK, who lived about 2 miles from my house run field strength tests. He turned his 2 meter beam on my signal until his beam found the null in my signal. This was without the tiger tail. He then used his rf gain and built in attenuator to get my signal to S9 his receiver. I then added the tiger tail to the rubber ducky that came with my HT. My signal dropped to just under S7. That is about 6 dB or the same as cutting the signal in half and cutting the remaining signal in half again. Based on that test I decided tiger tails were not the helpful device some people seemed to think. 

A bit about the latest tests I have run. I have three "rubber ducky" antenna now and three quarter wave whips for 2 meters all of different design. I used my nanoVNA for the initial impedance/SWR tests. 

All three rubber duckies suffered from considerable impedance shift and increase in SWR beyond 2:1 over the upper part of the band. The resonant point was shifted downward by the addition of the tiger tail.

However, adding the tiger tail to all three quarter wave whips did little to shift the impedance. The band width of all three antennas did get slightly narrower but not so much that the SWR reach 2:1 anywhere on the band.

I am looking forward to OTA testing when the weather improves. Hopefully, adding the tiger tail will improve the signal strength. When I get some OTA test results, I'll share them with you.