Panorama Antenna / ACUHB-U

After the success of the AVDFH-B install and me turning into a bit of a Panorama Antenna fan boy (but why don’t they make more Amateur radio antenna?) then I thought I’d give another type a try, this one does has 3dB gain (7dBi) above the AVDFH-B.

The hinge section is the same as the AVDFH-B but this time the whip has a centre mounted loading coil made from tough Nylon, looks a lot more durable than some of the Amateur radio antennas on the market. As the hinge section is the same then it does mean I can unsrew the whip from the hinge and interchange them as I see fit.

This antenna is available in loads of different version depending on the use it’s put to, this variant is the ACUHB-U, it’s cut for the UHF band and covers a frequency range 430MHz to 472MHz, it’s factory tuned and will work between those frequencies with a VSWR below 2:1 however, luckily for me I found the resonant frequency a little low when tested with my NanoVNR so it did get a little hair cut so I could tune it to the range of frequnecies that I was interested in, it did require a small amount from both the top and bottom to achieve 50 Ohms at my centre frequency.

For me this is my go to antenna for 70cm operation, works great and appears to give 2-3 signal points improvement in both transmit and recieve compared to a simple 1/4 whip from my usual hill top perches and again, once installed you can hardly tell it’s there, just what I like, nice and discrete.