Thread: What R my antenna options?

Originally Posted by nasa

which is on my rear deck (next to window) which is tinted. I am trying to compare the performance I get with it to what I could expect by having an antenna mounted on the outside -- like the mp3car one. The mp3car one is of interest because it claims 0 db gain... So would it do better than the one that claims 7 dbi given it's outside the car?

Realistically, without actually doing it your only going to get a good guess regardless.

The one you link to has a magnetic base, as I have a spare one of those. If you were to get the magnetic base to make direct metal contact with the car you´d get the benefit of the car´s exterior as a ground-plane in addition to it´s rated/actual gain.

Currently, I´m sporting one of these bad boys. It´s kickin´ the crap out of the little stock POS I rigged to be external to test from the back of the carpc. The linked one is hooked up to a router I put in the trunk. It gets good signals even though I have it mag mounted upside-down inside the trunk. Since it´s awesome, but an eyesore, especially on my muscle-car. This effectively cuts much of the signal it can receive and transmit, add to that since it´s in the confined area much of it´s transmitting signal is reflected back. As such, the 3db one I was looking at I´ll go with eventually. As I´m near 100% positive it´ll do better than the near 8db one I have now with it being crippled.

It´s still a crap-shoot, but my opinion of what I know so far of your setup is unless you have a decent mount-point for that thing, you´ll probably do better with a weaker gained antenna that´s more properly placed and/or mounted.

Usually the weakest link tends to be the cable used, either improperly matched or lossy. Just use this as a guideline.