Short / mini antennas

Hunterman said:
How many run one of those short or mini radio antennas on their truck? I have tried 2 different brands (I don’t recall which brands) that I got on Amazon. I returned both of them because well they sucked! I didn’t spend a bunch of money on them. They were probably in the $15-$20 range when I bought them.

Anyone have good experience with a shorter antenna if so what brand? I’m not talking about being in the middle of a city with great reception or in the middle of no where when you barley get a signal on any antenna but back country roads and rolling hills does any shorty antenna get almost as good of reception as the standard OEM antenna?

I know that the longer antennas will always work better but is there something maybe 90% as good on a smaller size?
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I like to keep running the original antenna cause it helps with clearance height for the truck.
 
Putting this on my truck…you short antenna people dont know how to attract the ladies 😂
IMG_3726.webp
 
RedZilla said:
I got this one when my truck was new. It’s been on ever since and I’m pleased with the performance. I can still listen to WSM AM out of Nashville at night when their signal is strongest. That’s 300 miles away for me. I still get all the local stations I did with the original whip. These are a quality product USA made by a family owned company. Make sure to scroll down the page on Amazon and read about the product and the company. 👍


View attachment 174246
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I have this one and it works fine for me.
 
RedZilla said:
OK, the results are in of the unofficial Factory/Stubby antenna real world analysis.

I'll start off by describing the area where I tested today. I live in central Indiana about 30 miles east of Indianapolis. We have very minor rolling hills with patches of woods of several acres spaced 1/2 -2 miles apart. It's a perfect fall day with a slight breeze and clear blue skies. I parked my truck in the open to get away from misc. interferance that seems to occur around neighborhoods and concentrated power distribution systems.
View attachment 174576
The stubby antenna I have been using since day one is the AntennaMastRus 6-3/4" copper coil for Ford Super Duty. It's not just a metal wire covered in plastic. It's an internal copper coil, thus mimicking, the quarter wavelength of the OEM mast as close as possible for it's size.
View attachment 174587 View attachment 174586

First I quickly discovered with the OEM antenna that it was going to be hard to make specific station comparisons because there were way more than I expected and probably 95% were strong enough to enjoy listening to. If a station didn't come in perfectly clear I didn't include it in the results. So the results are just a quantity of stations with similar sound quality.

So to cut to the chase, here are my results:
OEM - It was able to clearly pick up AM stations as far away as Chicago, Nashville and Cincinnati. I counted a total of 39 strong AM stations reaching over 300 miles, and a whopping 59 very strong FM stations in a radius of about 80 miles. This included both analogue and digital broadcasts. Both AM and FM stations were equally strong from the lowest frequency to the highest. If I wasn't looking at the display I could not have distinguished where on the frequency range the station was transmitting.

Stubby - I counted a total of 9 AM stations and 55 FM stations, again both analogue and digital. Obviously AM took a big hit, but surprisingly, the three furthest stations still came in pretty strong with a little bit of white noise mixed in. As for FM stations, I think I got a good sounding signal on almost an identical list of analogue stations and totally lost of few of the digital stations.

Now a few caveats to my "scientific" test. I was running my test sitting stationary in a very open area. Driving between obstacles and land formations and the like would probably reduce the number of stations I would have included in the results. But I'm confident the reduction in stations would have been nearly equal for both antennas and would be more an indication of signal strength than quality of reception by the antenna.

So, my conclusion, at least for this particular stubby antenna, is that it performs far better at least where I live than many have indicated their experiences were with these type after market antennas in the areas they live in. Honestly for me the difference was almost negligible, especially as I tend to save a few favorite stations on the presets and stick to those primarily. I do listen to OTA radio occasionally, both AM and FM and for my needs the 6-3/4" AntennaMastRus, made in Wisconsin, works perfectly.

Now to address a few of the previous comments in the thread. As you can see I don't live where there are parking garages so I really have no need for a "feeler whip" mounted on the truck. And If I had the choice to park in a public garage, I wouldn't even consider entering if the clearance was marked less than 8 feet.

Oh, and for whoever commented regarding effectiveness regarding size and shape, I did notice when installing that my stubby had a slight bend causing it to tilt ever so slightly to the passenger side. :unsure:🤭

PS: I did entertain myself by removing the antennas and testing without any mast. Zero AM stations could be picked up at all and surprisingly, I did pick up one FM analogue station very strong and clear that is located 80 miles west in Crawfordsville, Indiana. I don't know how many watts they are transmitting but they are really punching that station out there. Probably wouldn't want to live close to the transmitting antenna. o_O
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You should go perform this test again at night. I bet you would get different results. ha
 
RedZilla said:
Yep, totally different. I worked graveyard for many years. Amazing what happens to AM after sunset. :alien:😁
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Yup, gotta love that ionosphere skip. 😁

At night, without solar radiation, the ionosphere becomes thinner, and the lowest level of the ionosphere disappears. This allows for the AM radio waves to bounce back and forth between the remaining layers of the ionosphere and Earth’s surface, traveling thousands of miles away. This is referred to as skywave propagation, or “the skip.”
 
Mad_Max said:
Canyon Trekker is correct - the stubby antennas will severely compromise your ability to receive. I just passed my ham radio general exam and all the radio and antenna theory is still swimming around in my head and he is spot on. I never had a problem with the stock antenna and with the new ham license I will be adding even more. @Vermodster did a nice job with his antennas and I may look to copy his install so as not to scream "radio equipment onboard" too loudly.
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BuiltRight here, but definitely not as great reception
 
Hunterman said:
How many run one of those short or mini radio antennas on their truck? I have tried 2 different brands (I don’t recall which brands) that I got on Amazon. I returned both of them because well they sucked! I didn’t spend a bunch of money on them. They were probably in the $15-$20 range when I bought them.

Anyone have good experience with a shorter antenna if so what brand? I’m not talking about being in the middle of a city with great reception or in the middle of no where when you barley get a signal on any antenna but back country roads and rolling hills does any shorty antenna get almost as good of reception as the standard OEM antenna?

I know that the longer antennas will always work better but is there something maybe 90% as good on a smaller size?
Click to expand...

I didn't read 4 pages of comments but wanted to say that I run the stock antenna because it shows clearance for the cab. If it starts to scrape, you're likely to hit whatever you're trying to go underneath.
 
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