I was returning from IST 2004 on Thursday, having departed early and leaving some of my collegues to Fly the Flag. As I was leaving my Aunts QTH in Dungarvan, John Ketch EI2GN gave me a shout on the repeater on 145.675Mhz.

I’ve been waiting for a chance to try out the ATAS-120 that I have for a while now and as I had about an hour of a trip back to Tramore we changed frequency to 7.099.

John and I had been calling one another for about 3 minutes when a German Station (Tor DL2YFT, somewhere on the Dutch-German Border) came up on frequency to tell us that we were calling over one another. EI2GN and I both could hear him but not one another (not surprising really) so we then maintained slightly ‘lop sided’ communications pretty much until I got home and finished the conversation before I got out of the car.

See here for the results of one Radio Amateurs Experiments with two popular antenna against his own Home Brew antenna (XYL would kill me if I put that on the car).
Here is another home-brewed antenna. One really has to have respect for someone who a) goes to all that trouble and b) has the technical know how to do it.

Bearing in mind that any shortened antenna (Like the ATAS-120) has to be a compromise (some would argue an expensive Dummy Load), I was plesantly surprised at how effective it was in maintaining communications.