I suspect the 18V needs decent radials under it to perform well though.
Any vertical mounted near ground performs better with radials.  However, 
something like a ham stick will perform pretty well with a single quarter 
wave counterpoise or single quarter wave radial strung from the ground side 
at the feed point.
If you can get 3 or 4 radials out, it'll work better.  Just depends on how 
much space you have to play with.
And, of course, ham sticks are single band, so you have to go out and change 
the resonators to use different bands.
But, they do work amazingly well for a compremise antenna.
The MFJ hamtennas are around 30 bucks each and I've used them for some time.
I even had some success using an 80M hamtenna on a tripple magnet mount on 
the truck last summer...  And the 20M stick worked really well on the mag 
mount.
And in that case, you have a pretty small ground plane relative to the 
frequency you are using.

73
Colin, V A6BKX
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Ryan" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 10:23 AM
Subject: Re frase


> Hi Colin and all:
>
> Allow me to refrase. I'm looking for a less expensive option to tie me 
> over until I can afford the Outreach tripod combo, which is the consence's 
> number one. I think that was your suggestion as well although I'm not 
> sure. I have come to learn that good performing verticals aren't cheap let 
> alone good performing portables that can the power from a high power 
> transceiver. So I think the best thing todo is see if I can borrow the 
> antenna that I test drove this past weekend from my club. It's only used 
> for FD so by then, I should have a good solution in place.
>
> 73:
> Mike
>
> Sent from my iPhone