There are many variations when it comes to antenna adaptors for walkie talkies / scanner radios. If you have a decent walkie talkie that has a removable antenna, chances are its probably got an SMA connection type. Either an SMA male or SMA female. If you want to increase the range of your radio, all you need to do is purchase a better antenna. Make sure its one that is finely tuned to the frequency that you want to transmit on / listen to.
Pictured above: Common Adapters / Connector types for swapping different antenna connections. Male and female SMA to BNC / BNC to SMA. From LBSF. If you need a different type of adapter, such as male / female SMA to SMA, TNC, UHF etc, there’s a great selection for sale here.
An example would be if you only ever use PMR446 or 2-meters [145MHz] and your radio has an SMA male connection. For this you would require an SMA-female antenna that is strong in this frequency range. A Nagoya NA-771, Retevis RHD-771, or Nagoya NA-773 would fit the bill in this case. And if you get the right connection type for your radio, no adapter is required.
But if you want to be more prepared, or you are confused about connection / extension types and don’t know which antenna to buy in case it doesn’t fit your radio, the good news is that there are adaptors that can solve this problem very quickly. So, if you ended up buying an antenna with the wrong connection type for your radio, all you have to do is find the correct adapter. Connect it to the bottom of your current antenna and then attach the antenna to your radio.
It’s cheap to buy a set of adapters, so that no matter whether you have an older scanner with a BNC connection, or a newer radio like a Quansheng or Baofeng, you have a connector that can make the antenna compatible with either type of radio; an older scanner or a newer transceiver.
With these adapters you can alternate between antennas and radios. So, if you have an old scanner with a BNC connection you can use an SMA female antenna with the right adapter [pictured above]. The same applies the other way round. Attach the correct adapter and a newer radio can be fitted with an old scanner antenna. Literally takes a few seconds to fit.
It’s always a good idea to have a few sets of antenna adapters around. You never know when you might need one. And they are so cheap to buy. And its interesting sometimes to mix it up a bit and put different antennas on different radios to see how they perform.