I had some time this weekend to do side-by-side receive testing of a variety of VHF/UHF whip antennas using my Kenwood TH-D74a. For signal strength testing, I used three WX channels within range of my house in Oceanside. NOTE: This is receive testing only. I did not test transmit, although I plan to do that later on. Transmit testing requires another person at a distance to help with the testing results.
The antennas I tested:
- Diamond SRH320A Tri-Band Whip Antenna [SCORE: 21]
- Comet SMA-24 HT Whip Antenna [SCORE: 21]
- Nagoya NA-771 Whip Antenna [SCORE: 19-21]
- Hypario HPA-701 Whip Antenna (Nagoya) [SCORE: 18]
- Kenwood TH-D74 stock whip antenna [SCORE: 14-16]
- MFJ-1714 Long Ranger 2-meter Telescopic Antenna [SCORE: 12-14 extended, 10 contracted]
The score is the S meter values for three WX stations at different distances. A max score of 27 would be 9/9/9 on the S meter receive readout.
The best-performing VHF/UHF antenna I own is the TRAM 1185 Amateur Dual-Band Magnet Antenna. I use this on my car. I did not test this with the whips as I’ve already tested a mag mount vs. whip scenario, and this mag mount will outperform any whip antenna that I’ve tried.
The winner is the Diamond SRH320A. Some of these I will keep, and others I will sell. I walk through the reasons to keep some of these on my Gear page.