I have an use a small collection of alternative antennas on my Icom ID-51 and Yaesu FT-5D to hopefully improve RX and TX over the standard rubber antennas that come supplied with the radios as standard.

When I’m at home and running the Zum Hotspot I don’t want a big cumbersome antenna so I attach a stubby which works perfectly. If I go out and about I like to attach a slightly bigger Nagoya and sometimes I like to use a full sized Diamond antenna.

A week or so ago I decided to attach these alternative antennas directly to my Icom IC-705, run them and see what SWR they returned. I was rather shocked. All of them returned an SWR reading that was off the meter which surprised and shocked me.

I posted this up to the Facebook group that I’m a member of and got back some very helpful information but primarily got the following ideas

(1) Add counterpoise wires to the antenna mounting
(2) Move the antenna away from the radio (put it on a fly-lead)
(3) These antennas are not intended to be used on a base station
(4) Handheld radios are tough and will just cope with the high SWR

So, I will not be using these sorts of antennas on my Icom IC-705 because they don’t seem to be made for that type of use and ultimately I don’t wat to damage it. Instead, if I want to use the VHF/UHF functionality of the 705 I’ll continue using the external Diamond D-31.