Diamond dual band antennas better than you think!

[paulears]

I thought I'd post this here rather than in the other sections because people often ask about the Diamond 30/50/70 antennas for things other than the ham bands, where they are firmly designed for.

My home is on top of the highest part of our town - which, in the Broads area doesn't really have hills. My office is at sea level a mile away with buildings on the west side - so while it's OK for marine band, VHF and UHF is limited in range. I've got a licenced UHF repeater up on 455MHz, and it's on my house - connected to a commercial 4.5dB vertical. Works really well and because it did, I added a few extra antennas there at home - a D30, a UHF commercial J-Pole (short and stubby) and a vertical for air band. I had some kit like scanners and a marine transmitter, but the room got turned into a junk store room and pretty much forgotten about. My wife made me take down everything I wasn't usuing - so I thought I'd remove everything bar the commercial vertical for the repeater. I pulled them down and discovered that for 5 years, the D30 has been working really well on the repeater, 20MHz away from it's proper frequency. They clearly are a lot better than I thought, out of band!