The high capacity batteries are great but wont charge with the stock wall
adapter. You have to use one of the aftermarket chargers.
The Comet is a great antenna, after a year I still haven't quit searching
for the one I lost.
For triband use (vx5-r) the high gain 1720S has given me good love.
In the air I have had the best luck with a modified hotrod or a dipole. The
hotrod is a 5/8 half wave telescoping jobbie with the telescoping part
replaced with a piece of wire the same length as the removed antenna
section. Works well. The dipole is just a split section of coax cable. I
think 19" in each direction. Stupid easy to make and performs great. A
little harder to install in a comp harness.
Kev C
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott [mailto:sw@shadepine.com]
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 9:52 AM
To: hg_forum@chgpa.org
Subject: Links to VX-150 Antennas & Batteries
A few people this weekend asked about the whip antenna I had on my VX-150.
For anyone who's interested, the one I have is a Comet SMA-24 17" flexible
whip antenna. I bought it after hearing that it's superior to the standard
duck that comes with the VX-150, and I've found that to be true.
Here's a link to a page of reviews on eHAM.net:
And here's where you can buy one for $20 at Universal Radio:
Flying with the 17" whip is a bit more challenging than a duck. In my case,
I simply inserted my VX-150 upside-down (knob-end first) into my Z5's radio
pouch (on the side of my chute), and punched a small hole in the bottom of
the pouch so the whip would extend to the rear while flying (and not whip my
face!). This worked fine (I just set my frequency, volume, and squelch and
locked the keypad before inserting the radio.) You can also coil up this
whip without harming it (it just pops back), so you could fly with it that
way too (though it might not work as well). You could also just buy a
mini-duck for flying and swap it with the whip for improved ground use.
Also, FYI...the stock battery that comes with the VX-150 is lame---it's a
ni-cad, 700mah battery that doesn't last long. I picked up a replacement
battery pack from Maha/Powerex that's awesome---it's a NiMH, 1500mah pack
that lasts many times longer than the stock battery. Here's the link to buy
it for $50:
Finally, Maha/Powerex sells a nice universal quick battery charger. It has
an LED readout (so you can monitor charge progress), will power-cycle
batteries by discharging then recharging, and even has a temperature sensor
that goes on the battery while charging. The charging contacts are movable,
so it accommodates a huge variety of batteries of all kinds (Li-Ion, Ni-Cad,
NiMH). Here's a link to buy it for $75:
Hope this is useful for some of you (took me a while to research this
stuff!).
Scott
Links to VX-150 Antennas & Batteries
Moderator: CHGPA BOD