I want to connect an external antenna to marine handheld VHF radio. How do I do this?

Even though for range, there is no substitute for a fixed marine set, we do realise that there are smaller boat owners that want a smaller solution for their communication requirements.

Icom have an AD-98FSC antenna connector adapter that will convert to a BNC socket. This adaptor will fit the IC-M25 / IC-M35 / IC-M37 / IC-M85E / IC-M93D. You would then need a BNC male plug on the end of your antenna cable to go into this adapter. You could use a second adapter to achieve this (SO-239 to BNC female).

For the IC-M73 you can use the adapter SMA.007 which requires no second adapter as it will accept a PL259 plug without the need of a BNC plug.

However, if you do use this approach you will:

• Get a small loss going through the adapters and connectors.
• Get loss over the cable run: the longer the run the greater the loss.

Our advice would be where possible to choose a fixed marine VHF radio.

17/06/2020