Carl, i do not care to saving that little money, I just want to experiment
(let alone that my crude measurement method has shown very bad results for the cheap Chinese Ht antennas - while still showing good results for the quality ones).
what I have done is i have bought me a length of RG142 on a SMA connector. I was thinking of removing outer case and shield initially, but I stumbled on the following design by SV1BYO.
It is a two-band whip, practically two antennas, one inside the other. So I will be experimenting with the proper length of coax shield as the UHF antenna.
(sorry for the Greek text, i cannot make the design program to produce text in English. But the principle is clearly shown on the right sketch)
