Testing the EnGenius Durafon with the Antenna Higher Up
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- Опубликовано: 12 апр 2025
- After testing an alleged 15 dbi antenna and noticing no notable improvement, the next thing to try is to raise the stock antenna higher up. I put it about 3 meters higher than the previous test and did notice a significant amount of increased coverage. Another test with the antenna even higher is in order and may be the best reception we can get out of the system.
There is complication with raising the antenna as the attenuation of the wire becomes an issue again, reducing the sensitivity as the cable gets longer. A longer cable is needed the higher the antenna gets. We will have to determine what the best balance is between height and sensitivity, which can only be deduced from a lengthy series of tests. 
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The range though thats crazy! Its a throwback how that phone sounds, Sounds so much like the CDMA days with that ring.
It works several blocks over, which is quite impressive considering the terrain around here. I thought the same thing about the sound quality!
The stock antenna should work just fine because it's set to run at the frequency of the system the alleged better antenna won't make as much difference as they say because it may not match frequency
The stock antenna does work fine; I want something that works better.
What a cool video!I actually happen to fall under both categories of people you mentioned at the end. So, I’ll eagerly await the storm video, and in the meantime, tell you what I think about this antenna situation.
I don’t claim to be an expert antenna person, though. This year will only be my third or fourth of radionics experimentation and researching.
I think you should try 3 things:
1. A better antenna for the handset (as you discussed, modifying one is absolutely an option). There may be reason to try something other than a whip on it, depending on the performance improvement from a whip that’s just bigger than the one it uses now. (I actually got some 900MHz phones recently that came with broken antennas, so I’m going to try a whole host of things for maxing out the range on them. And, of course, I will make videos of those processes, but who knows when they’ll be.)
2. A different type of antenna for the base. Assuming you’d only want omnidirectional, I think a slim Jim, j-pole, or dipole would be good to try. In terms of reception on the weather radio band, the slim Jim is said to be the best of those three, but I have yet to make a working one. My j-pole is absolutely fantastic and increases the reception range by at least 50 miles in some cases (obviously, this is with a higher-power transmitter, and on a frequency that travels better than 900MHz, so your case would most likely see a proportional improvement as opposed to an equal one). Dipoles are by far the easiest to obtain, since you can actually make them out of some $5-or-less components and some spare rods or wires of the right lengths. For your case, a full-wave one definitely wouldn’t be too big to be practical, as they often are on lower frequencies, so I’d recommend that type.
3. A cable with lesser attenuation and/or better shielding. I’m not actually sure what you could be for that, but you could definitely get any kind of cable you want and just crimp on the appropriate connectors yourself.
All of these antenna types have great, detailed instructional and calculation resources put out there online by the ham radio community. Generally, the same antenna types can work on different frequency bands, as long as each antenna is built to the right size for whatever band it’s being used on.
Good luck with this, and I’ll look forward to seeing what you try next. Hope this was helpful.
good video bro and i can't wait to see the storm video thunderstorms 🙂I enjoyed the video
Is it grounded in case of a lightning ⚡🌩️ strike
Try using a Wilson little will CB antenna!
Try receiving on regency or realistic patrolman scanner.
If it's true that the Durafon is operating on the 800-900 MHz band, then it makes sense why that larger antenna is not helping. For this frequency range, the maximum antenna size for maximum performance would be about 5/8 wavelength. The antenna should be about 8 inches long for max performance. I really tend to like 1/4 wave ground plane antennas though based on my experience cause they tend to bend the signal over hills better (believe it or not that would be only about 3.25 inches). Then there's also the issue of antenna matching (making sure the antenna is perfectly resonant at the exact frequency you're using). That's going to make a big difference as well. The 8 inches I told you is just a rough estimate as I don't know the exact frequency this thing produces. If you have the money, it would be great to get a NanoVNA and set it up for VSWR measurement. Look up the exact frequency the durafon is making and then use the NanoVNA to tune the antenna for perfect VSWR at that frequency. It would be best to get an adjustable antenna (one that allows you to modify the length). The one you're using now has coils in it and so it's definitely not the type you can cut to the perfect length. Sometimes people just want a quick no-tune solution which is what your type of antenna is for, but if you want the best performance, you need to have one that is adjustable. It should be a pretty short adjustable antenna - you know like maybe 5 inches to 12 inches in length. A tunable ground plane antenna might be a good choice. So I say stick with the small antenna for now and just use some really good low loss coax cable, but if you want to make it perfect, then get an adjustable (tunable) antenna. If you can manage the stiffness of it and find the right adapters, then using LMR400 could be a good choice.
Now when it comes to the phone antenna itself. Getting a longer one in that case I really don't think would improve anything bc the antenna on the phone is already at least 1/4 wave long. What instead, would improve the phone's antenna would be to droop a ground wire from the outside shield (the ground part of the antenna), not the inner connecting terminal, but the ground. If you can somehow attach a wire to the outside shield of that antenna, and let it dangle down (maybe about 8 inches should do), you might see an improvement. And that also shouldn't be too prohibitive cost wise and time wise.
If ur curious as to the reasoning here, the thing is that the phone antenna is already long enough for the frequency and getting any longer will not improve anything. See, this is a myth that I learned and discovered the hard way many years ago. You'd naturally think that the longer an antenna is, the better, but that's not how it works. The best antenna is always the one that is the most resonant and radiates the most effectively, not the longest one. In this case, that whip antenna on the phone is plenty long, but it's missing something crucial. In order for an antenna to work well, it needs a ground, not just the radiator. That phone antenna by default, has no ground at all (other than some potential metal parts inside the phone's case). To give it a proper ground, you need to dangle the wire as I said above. You don't need to attach the ground wire to anything other than the base of the antenna (the other end just dangles down). This creates the other half of a dipole. (Look up dipole antenna). It's the simplest type of antenna. There is the radiating portion of the antenna, and then the ground portion. Both parts are equally important. It's just like when you wire up a circuit, you never use just the positive wire, you always connect a ground too. The lack of ground in this type of whip antenna is no good at all. All professional antennas have a ground. Every single type of ham radio antenna has a ground. It's just that it's impractical for most portable things to have a ground wire and so they just leave it off, but that definitely reduces performance.
I know this may not be much help but you can talk to some amateur radio clubs and they might be able to help a little bit more on different antennas for what you could use it for and they might recommend a little better antenna for what you're doing
I don't really have any connections in that area, but you're probably right, someone familiar with 900 MHz amateur radio would probably be of tremendous assistance with this.