yeh I agree with that.
A dual bander for FM work on repeaters will be pretty much the same as
running two individual antennas for each band.
Any idea what sort of clearence you have above the balcony railing?  Some of
the better dual banders are about 8 feet long and you could easily clamp it
or otherwise attach it to the metal railing.  They're very very light and
have very little wind load.
A general rule of thumb is that any antenna outside will out perform an
indoor antenna.
So even if you can only get a mobile whip up on the balcony rail, do it.
There are plenty of shorter mobile whips that will at least get your signal
out a bit further.  Also, having an antenna directly connected to the metal
railing will help your signal because there will be a far better ground
plain then using a magnetic mount on the railing.  Magnetic mount antennas
are design to be placed near the center of a relatively large metal surface
and use that metal surface as an artificial ground with no actual electrical
connection.  A ground plain style bass antenna, or a mobile whip designed to
be mounted directly to a vehicles body will work better if given a ground
plain area such as a railing to work against.
As for your question regarding the different antenna makers, well, the only
difference really amongst them is quality and type of design.  Diamond has a
good reputation for solid construction and durability.  Cushcraft has some
of that, but has some record of failure and malfunction, more so then
diamond.  MFJ can be excellent, or it can be junk, one just never can tell
until you open the box. I use a tram bass dual band antenna and it works
just great.  Construction is decent and performance is very good...it is
rated at 7DB gain on vhf and 11DB gain on UHF.  Weather this is DBD, DBI or
some other variable, I don't know, but it works like a charm, and it was
less then half the price of the equivalent diamond model.

73
Colin, V A6BKX
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Deatherage" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: VHF antenna questions


>
> Thanks John for the information.
> Bill Deatherage
>
>
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