You gotta stop saying “get yourself a nice cold one” before your videos. I watched 10 videos in a row and I’m fucking wasted.

This works but you only improved the 2 meter band, not UHF. Use a piece of speaker wire instead. Cut one of the leads to your 19.5 inches for VHF and the other lead to 5.5 inches for a UHF counterpoise. Leave them stuck together, no need to peel the two leads apart from one another. When you change bands, the RF will "ignore" the non-resonant lead and use the one most resonant on that band. My own testing with a ham friend on simplex showed about a full S unit gain which is approximately 6db. This is equal to doubling your RF power. Not bad for a few cents worth of wire.

I've been a signaling officer for more than ten years, we did this on smaller radios all the time in the military. Great to see you use it too! 👍

4 years later and KZfaq serves this up to me. Nice work Ape 👍

I have tested the rat tail within my own city with 4 ham guys, all more experienced than me. One person registered 2 S unit increase about 25km away from me. Another person 28km away from me could not hear me with my ruby ducky baofeng UV-5R antenna unless I added the rat tail and he registered s2 or 2 S unit increase as well. It is real and works great.

Back in the day, one of the elder operators in my first ham radio club showed us this. He was an extra-class and knew his stuff and was considered to be by everyone in the area as an expert in home-brewed antennas.

Thanks for the tip. Worked on my radio just fine.

I've been reading about this very same technique since before I got my first "Ham" license in 1993! And yes, it does help!

The counterpoise is more commonly known as a Tiger Tail. As you know, it's 234/f - 5% = the length of the counterpoise. I just put mine between my SMA male and the radio on my FT-60. Having an aluminum body is an advantage. You are essentially making a vertical dipole. By holding the counterpoise in the direction you want to talk, it actually has some directivity as an L shape. It would only become a grounding element if it were on the ground. That would make it a vertical antenna with reflective radials. Good video...

I known about this for years but you still impressed me by connecting it the way you did.

Very cool! Thanks.

Was recently introduced to radios and I find your channel really educational. With threats of the "big one" and other calamities, I believe radios will relieve its helpful role in the future. Many thanks and please continue making these videos..

This is a classic modification and great to see! I did this to my venerable old Radio Shack HTX-202 back in the day when another ham mentioned it. Yes a before/after comparison would be cool to see.

Wow, I didn't know! Thanks for the info--short and easy to follow, easier to do!

They do work good. I always go to the base of the RF connector though. In the BNC days we would use the 25amp alligator clips and 18ga wire. On a portable a quarter wave whip and quarter wave ground plane is about as good as it gets on highband (VHF) while maintaining portability. There is lots of false advertising in portable antennas - just adding this little wire will add performance and save you money. Thanks for sharing !

Never thought about putting a counterpoise on a handheld, but it makes sense that it would help a little. Good video!

Agreed! Even if it doesn't work, it's such a cheap mod that it doesn't hurt to try!

Worked great for me, was able to receive but not transmit. Folks told me about this in the "blind" over the radio. I put it on and was able to transmit perfectly! This worked for our group! Great video!

This is the kind of youtubers that need more respect he has reactions to almost all his comments

Makes perfect sense. A little trivia: Back in the 70's and so Motorola HT's had a metal surface around the frame of the radio that you'd end up grabbing to hold the radio. Thus counter poise. As radio's evolved, so did plastic cases. Never could figure that out

It worked wonders on RX, I haven't got to testing the TX range so far, work has been crazy.

Awesome, going to do this with mine. I've also realized that if you grab the tip of the stock antenna with two fingers a bunch of noise goes away and signal comes in clearer.

Excellent info! Thanks!

HOLY SHIT THIS HELPED ME SO MUCH WOW!!!!!

ONE OF THE UV 5R RADIOS I HAVE LOCKS UP IN THAT IT WON'T TRANSMIT WHEN I PUSH BUTTON BUT MAKES A BEEP SOUND. WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT?

Great video! Thank you Sir! I''ll give it ah try

If you make a "Sping" connector (solder a ring terminal to a spade connector), you can then change tails in the space of a couple of seconds - unplug the 2M tail and plug in the 70cm without having to fumble out with a screwdriver (and risk dropping/losing the screw). Or you can have a 17cm tail ring terminalled to the radio (for 70cm use) but with a spade on the end of the tail, so you can plug in the "extender" for 2 Metres (an extras 35cm or so) Both save a lot of time and obviate the need to carry a screwdriver or risk losing the case screw.

great video by the way

Awesome. Subscribed, and liked :)

VERY informative. Thanks.

cool going to give this a shot

Great video... many people do not consider tying their systems to 'earth' ground. Base stations are often grounded to the chassis of the radios thru the power connector so it would make sense to help your portable to tie it's ground to earth as well. I would see no problem with a longer, thinner wire cable ( not solid wire ) and possibly a long spike nail on the end to stomp in the ground if your out of the buildings. Many ways to pick up the safety ground in buildings instead of the 'common'. Since it is not supposed to actually be using the connection for heavy current travel, you could probably put a 10k to 1 meg resistor in the middle to give you a little more protection ' in case'. I'd have to try it out and see what I was getting both ways and pick the best performance.. but keep safety in mind.

That's a good video, but... I made a tiger tail and by using a larger end ring, it fits on the antenna port nicely. Simple, durable and effective. It's also called a tiger tail. By using the tiger tail, you can give it slight directivity by pointing it in the direction of TX. This is the first time I've ever seen one mounted to the back of the radio.

Thank you for an intersting and useful set of information. Stay safe. ATB. Nigel

Great Video! I'd like to try this on my Feng! Does it matter under which screw it goes? Also, does it have to hang loose or could it be taped to the body of the radio as it hangs? Thanks

this will absolutely help

I tried a 16cm one for PMR and what a difference. I only bought a pair of UV-5R's recently mistakenly believing they were just better quality walkie talkies...doh! However they have sparked my interest in ham radio. I still have the OEM rubber ducks fitted but a pair of Nagoya 771's are on the way. I have read the OEM antenna are pretty bad so I was rooting about on the net and read about counterpoints. Before fitting them the radios were simply short range walkie talkies but after fitting they came alive. I have been receiving extremely clear transmissions from all around me for a distance of over 20 miles!!!! No I'm not kidding. Admittedly the best one was in a pretty elevated position on moorland in West Yorkshire (I'm situated West of Manchester UK on flat peat farmland). He was transmitting from Holme Moss near Holmfirth where the BBC TV mast is located. He was talking to others in Runcorn, Cheshire, Bolton in Lancashire and Eccles some five miles East of me. I ask for a radio test, admittedly at high power in frequency mode and he reported 3/9. I am very impressed a piece if wire can do that. I went into channel mode and reception was still as clear but my transmission was barely readable. Given the distance (20+ miles) that did not surprise me. However it did transmit the five miles to Eccles though not very clearly. These are great little radios but illegal as PMR's in the UK without a licence. However I am going to take the Foundation course and test as it has sparked an interest in this old codger. Who knows? I may well get deeply into it and invest in a decent base station. Something else for my wife to moan at me about other than my collection of rifles, csmeras and all my time messing with computers and electronics. A man has to have a hobby or two, or three or four or......😄

I like your video, and adding a ground plane is a decent way to improve the range of these Baofeng sets. The wave thing on your tester is the diode check, and that wave represents that it will make a tone when the probes are shorted. It will actually make a short time on a diode. The wire trick should work on UHF too, but would work better if shortened for UHF. Aside from that, all good.

WHAT IF YOU ISE THAT RUBBER DUK ANTENNA THAT IS SUPPOSE TO BE SUPERIOR TO THE 5 UVR ANTENNA? IT IS THAT BAOFENG FHP8? WILL USING THIS FACTORY ANTENNA WORK BETTER THAN WHAT COMES WITH 5 UVR?

Your feng looks good and solid!

hey bro i need your help i just got my baofeng uv5r and i last time i spoke you i asked you if the chirp program would work in tijuana mexico and you said it should now my question is i do have there channels the local authorites but once i enter there frequency i dont hear anything can you help ne

Do Nagoya 771R’s overload Baofeng uv-5r’s? Mine works worse then my stock rubber antenna(and it’s a legit one)

I made a wrist strap (paracord with a wire inside), attached to the radio's strap buckle (see manual) with one end of the wire then connected to the belt clip screw. To reduce the length of the wire/paracord (wrist strap size), I wrapped the paracord to make a coil with the free end of the wire cut before it enters the coil. All effectively the same as this video, just cleaner looking and less cumbersome. Can even adjust the wrist strap (beads, etc - just like a regular strap) to fit better around my wrist. Since it's functional (and "pretty"), not all that important whether it improves performance or not (darn hard to tell).

Thank you

can you help me Do you have an idea connect two of the type of EVX 5400

Great ! Now I just need to take the exam and pass it to have my license and a cold one with it.

Can you tell me which one of your videos If it explains the basics of ham radio because when I learned 20 some odd years ago it was all Morse code and here this looks like a walkie-talkie

would be cool to do real world field test using a good quality mobile with a good S meter like a Kenwood TM 281 for the receiving end. I may just try it and put the argument to bed.

Excuse my ignorance but, do you have to have licenses for these types of radios? Are they not just fancy walkie talkies? I just want something I could communicate with family around town in a shtf situation if cell towers/signals go down.

i wonder if this mod affects wattage and swr

Since these radio's transmit, will a mis-measurement of the ground wire you just attached skew the SWR and burn out your transmitter? Would this idea also work for the UHF band and if so, what would the wire length be for that? Thank you.

Does the rat tail need to be straight, or can you roll it and put out of the away?

Hi I accidentally made mine 16 inches. Thin wire not coax, but my fm radio reception was clear while my son's was scratchy! I'm gonna change my rats tail.i have subbed and everytime I see a recommendation and I see smoking ape! I think of myself lol. Hairy and a chain smoker. Love your vids! Very informative! Cheers from Australia

If I got a cold one during the beginning does that count as opening a cold one with the boys?

If i have a 47 cm antenna, is it better to use a 47 cm counterpoise or 54cm because of the quarterwave of 2m band? For 70cm uhf should i add another shorter poise or will that one do for that too?

Nice to see somebody making their own stuff.... and not trying to sell the next great thing.

Does it matter the length of the antenna,Stubby or long? tiger tail Will always be the same length for the appropriate band?

So I have 200 acres of bush and need to set up my uv-5r in the house sometimes as a base station . Could a portable J pole antenna be run up to the second floor to increase range through a mile of bush ?? Thoughts.

Does it have to be dangling like that or can I coil it and tape it to the back of the radio.

What connector does it use? (For the antenna)

Great tip! Does it matter what kind of wire or gauge you use?

Will the Baofeng UV-9r go below 130 mhz? In Chrip, it is grey out when I try to lower it. I was able to do my UV-82 with no problem.

How can I decipher recorded digital communication over. I. R camera? I needed to know the radio frequency?

i tried this simple mod on my uv5r about 2 days ago, it works perfect back then. but when i use my radio today suddenly this mod not working, i double check the modification but no luck.

Hi, I have question if I could use for this copper speaker wire?

How about a legitimate Power/range Test with, then without the rat tail ? Now that would be a video worth watching :)

I have been looking for an easy method to increase receive ability, I will certainly give this a try. Thank. YOU

Yeah I have done this to 2 radios Still up in the air on them. Been on for about a month, now. BTW, good video. Some people I cant watch, because they ramble and jump too many places off topic. You do not do that.👍👍👍

Tram 1185. We take the antenna off the mag mount. Cut a stainless steel welding rod down to the frequency your using. I get 10-12 miles with this setup. Which is all I need.

Anybody who starts off a video by cracking a cold one ROCKS.

also, how you hold the HT makes a difference, have you ever noticed the feeling like the negative battery terminal is getting warm when your keying up? that's the RF energy lol, now it's trying to use us as a ground plane and I don't know how good a ground plane a person makes but I haven't noticed any noticeable positive or negative effects from holding the radio with the contacts against my palm or not holding it that way, I guess if it as a adverse affect the contacts would be placed differently. your right about the wire giving a ground plane, the gains are very small but do exist, one thing I did note from your video was you actually pointed out the length of the wire is cut to suit, I've seen so many other videos that just advocate chucking on any old length of wire which is not the way to tune!, I wonder if we could get a pl259 to SMA so the HT whip can be used in the test, maybe we could rig the whole thing up to a swr meter and play with lengths and see what happens, maybe that's another video for you!! I use the uv-82's I love the dual PTT buttons and one big winner for me is that the 0 button is in the right place on the 82!

have you tested the lanyard loop for continuity?

Just curious if anyone has used a counterpoise with it coiled up a little to get it out of the way? Does it defeat the purpose if its curled up and tucked out of the way? Ive made one but find it a little annoying to have it dangling on my side as im walking through the woods. Thanks for any input.

A counterpoise has nothing to do with earth ground. To preform well an antenna needs to be 1/2 wavelength long dipole. HT antennas are 1/4 wave long monopole (so are automobile antennas). A counter poise adds the other 1/4 wave length to create a half wave dipole.

I like a nice cold one. I also like my beofeng uv5r. Nice!

0:48 "it is more about the antenna then it is the radio" Correct, but the radio has to create a good signal (right frequency, good modulation, low spurious emissions) that is transmitted. And it should have a good selectivity, so that nearby strong signals don't drown out the weak signals you may be interested in. And it should have a good sensitivity that enables you to receive the weak signals in the first place. 1:08 "when you have a radio like this, it doesn't ground with the earth, right?" It doesn't need to ground with the earth. Think about the radios in airplanes, the international space station, television satellites or even space probes (Voyager 1 + 2). They all have working radios without a connection to the earth. 1:28 "The purpose of a counterpoise is to simulate a groundplane or to create a groundplane in the event you actually can't ground your negative charge or your radio to the earth" ... The simplest antenna you can use is the dipole, two pieces of wire where you move some electric charges around. To do this, you have the transmitter that applies a alternating current to it. You can attach a dipole antenna to a handheld radio, but the physical construction would look weird and it would not be that practical. So one half of the dipole was removed, some people call this a monopole antenna... but that name is misleading, there are no antennas with only one pole. The other half of the antenna wasn't removed, it is now just something else. It is a combination of the case of the handheld radio and the person holding it (capacitively coupled to the hand holding it). This works completely without any connection to the earth. Also because of this alternating current you can't talk about a negative charge. Half of the time it is a positive charge! 1:53 "or it could be that you have your station set up in an area with rocky soil" With the VHF/UHF on a handheld radio, the soil is irrelevant. You may have some reflections from it, but you have reflections from buildings, airplanes and other things too. And with a handheld radio you don't use the earth as a part of the antenna. 2:40 "you want to attach it to the negative portion of your antenna" Alternating current, there is no negative portion of a antenna. It changes between positive and negative. 3:10 continuity test with a multimeter The continuity test checks only if there is a low resistance path for direct current, but not for a 145 MHz alternating current. You just have luck that the baofeng has a metal case under its plastic and that screw has probably a fairly low impedance to it. If there were such a nice screw on the battery, you would probably find a DC path to it with the continuity tester. But think of the inductance that may be present on the way to a screw on a battery. It is common practice to add a filter to the power-lines to make sure that no RF can enter or exit the radio this way. 5:52 "there are some people on youtube that claim these things don't work at all and there are other people that claim that they work great adding 12 dB of gain to your antenna. Well I don't necessarily believe that to be true." This would be too good to be true... And if something is too good to be true, then it isn't true. 6:15 "I played around with this and I think I notice a difference, but at the same time when I move 2 or 3 feet to the left or to the right my radio performs better" With VHF/UHF you have a lot of reflections causing constructive and destructive interference. This results in hot-spots with high signal strength and cold-spots with no signal strength. If the other station is transmitting, search the position where the radio reception is good and stay at this position for transmit. This is the most effective way to use a compact handheld radio. There is no best antenna, there is one for every use-case. Normal antennas for handheld radios have as primary feature the small size, many are fairly bad antennas, but that is OK. If you want something better, get a HB9CV or a Yagi-Uda antenna or something like this: www.qsl.net/wb3gck/jpole.htm

Great video! The wire does actually work cuz it works off theory of a ground plane antenna. Will definitely help you on your receive side! Please don't pick a part this man's videos so much! I think you did an excellent job! You never said you was a technician

Would wire length work if I'm using my Baofeng BF-F8 Plus as a PMR radio❓

I just use stranded copper wire and wrap it around the antenna post, then screw the antenna down. Very easy, works great.

hi smokinape, can i curl up the rat tail or counterpoise & make it look like a spring coz i dont like the way it just hanging?

you missed a huge opportunity to say "one feng, two feng, red feng, blue feng."

Nice one bud in the military (UK) we called would have called this a trailing wire :)

I believe the word you were trying to retrieve was Imperial! :) Metric or Imperial measurements. Very, very cool vid! It is certainly worth trying; for ninety cents and about 30 seconds, sign me up.

No FN way! There’s a few 5/8 wave antennas on the market. But the problem is you need a death grip on the radio to make them out perform a 1/2 wave. You just gave me an idea to make a single tape measure radial that centers on the 2 belt clip screws for a range lord radio.

What is the length size of your counterpoise cable? Can you make a video where we can see the increase range of TX and RX with this counterpoise? Thanks!

Can someone explain the significance and the calculation of the length of the piece of wire? So this is kinda creating a virtual ground??? So would we say that if you had this hooked up to a proper antenna and were grounded you would not need this trick?

This does work, if it did not, the whole quarter-wave antenna theory would collapse...I liked how you lovingly name your talkies 🙂

The counterpoise to a monopole antenna should look like a flat sheet - the missing half of the dipole appears if you imagine this sheet to be a mirror. Your counterpoise looks more like the other half of the dipole itself. You're even measuring it to match. Since it's driven by an unbalanced co-ax feed it should have a balun. Of course there are many other variables so these things are rarely predictable. Have you tried using a balun?

worth a try. I use my UV-5R backpacking in the side of backpack with speaker mic. I work both bands so will try 2 meter one, I do have 42in abbree antenna but only use it when at fixed location like a picnet table. 73/s

Would you recommend this or just buy a better antenna?

This works!

are 2 baofeng a better option for range in outback vs reg walkie talkies like motorola mr350?

A quick question, does that rat tail need to go all the way to the ground ?

TheSmokinApe what band is 152.285?

Hi, how did you named the radio, the Feng 2 text?

Just a question. My baofeng unit has a hard time throwing far but has absolutely no problem on reception. Any ideas how to fix?

you had me at cold one! lol

Stupid question incoming: can I install two rat tails to either belt clip screw for both 2m and 70cm so I don't have to swap them out?

ty

I have the same multimeter! It was the best digital multimeter Wal-Mart had...