I'm still hearing a lot of Ham radio operators talking about adding Tiger Tails to their Handi-talkies. I tried one and it did improve it enough to notice. What I'm not hearing is how dumb it is to put a Tiger Tail on a Handi-talkie that has a speaker mike attached. For those who don't know what a Tiger tail is, its just a piece of wire attached to the ground point(Chassis) and acts as an antenna counterpoise. If you have a speaker mike attached to your Handi-talkie, you already have a 1/4 wave counterpoise due to the coil cable having a ground wire in it. Now, as to how long the ground counterpoise should be. If you look in antenna books, you'll notice that they say the negative end of a dipole should be at least a 1/4 wave long at the lowest frequency you will be using. What they don't tell you is that the negative end of a dipole can be 40 miles long if you want it to. When you put a mobile antenna on a vehicle, you never give it a second thought that the vehicle is many, many, many, 1/4 waves longer than you need. Well, that's because you have met the criteria of the counterpoise being at least 1/4 wave longer than the lowest frequency has been met. If you don't use a speaker mike, then adding a thin 20" (for 2 meters) 7" (for 440) piece of wire at the rubber duck connection point is a good idea. The reason the factories don't add a tiger tail is that they depend on your body capacitance while holding the Handi-talkie to be a reasonable connection.
