Nagoya NA-771 15.6″, Dual-Band, about $17 dollars
Diamond SRJ77CA 15″, Dual-Band, about $28 dollars
Nagoya NA-24J 16″, Dual-Band, about $18 dollars

As you have gathered by my series of articles, I’m pretty much relegated to going cheap. I use Baofeng, for the most part. You know the rubber duck antenna that comes with most radios are not great. That is putting it politely. Thus the after market whips.

Nagoya is the official antenna for Baofeng. They are designed to fit all models of Baofeng and work on the new GMRS V-1 by BTech—which is really Baofeng by another name. I saved my pennies and recently purchased the Diamond SRJ77CA which has a reverse SMA to fit Baofeng.

When I originally bought the UV-82, I purchased the Nagoya NA-771 15.6″ whip. I used it on UV-5rs, the BF-F9 and the UV-82HP and GMRS V-1. It works good on each and much better than the rubber duck that comes with the radio. I’ve not been nice to the antenna but it seems to have held up good for over a year.

The next purchase was the Nagoya NA-24J. It is a very pliable antenna. The problem is that the audio reports with it were not as good as the NA-771. It did not seem to have the range of the 771. I tried it as a scanner antenna, but it seemed to pick up a lot of noise.

Recently I purchased the Diamond SRJ77CA 15″ with it’s claimed 2.15 dbi gain. Amateurs know what “dbi gain” means. If it had any gain over the NA-771, I did not notice it. It performs as good as the NA-771, though. I’ve closed the car door on it a couple of times and can’t find a nick on it.

In summary, if you want the Diamond name, go ahead and spend the money. The NA-771, however, performs just as well and is cheaper than the other two. I cannot recommend the NA-24J.