Antenna suggestions for 938Mhz?

[madnachos]

I have been considering adding a dedicated antenna to monitor a trunked system (938Mhz) that I cant quite pull in with my current rooftop setup. I can hear the control channel but the signal is just weak enough that it wont decode.

Anyone have any recommendation on an inexpensive 900Mhz antenna so I can test and see if I can even pull in a strong enough signal from here? At this point all I really need is something I can get on the roof with to see if it will work, don't want to spend all the money on a rotator and a low-loss feed if it would not pull in the signals I need. Any of these window mountable 900mhz panel antennas you see for wireless networking and cellular any good?

 

[ermin]

938 Mhz Antenna

Google the dimensions for a beam and then make one out of some wood and coat hangers or old tv antenna elements. It won't be very big for that frequency and will be a great learning experience.

73 Ed

 

[prcguy]

I have a very heavy duty 800/900MHz 10dB gain corner reflector I'll sell ya for $20.
prcguy

 

[madnachos]

Google the dimensions for a beam and then make one out of some wood and coat hangers or old tv antenna elements. It won't be very big for that frequency and will be a great learning experience.

73 Ed

I actually found a really slick site to calculate the dimensions:

http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=11183

Might need to make one this weekend if I have the time.

 

[madnachos]

Last week I picked up a Cushcraft PC8910 Yagi from a neighbor of mine and I finally had a chance to install it. I had to mess around with the aiming quite a bit but once I tracked down the correct TRS system id (Disneyland fwiw) and got it aimed the results are impressive. Very interesting to just get on the roof and aim the Yagi around by hand...really shows you how directional they are. All in all this little project worked out real well. I had enough spare LMR-400 to use it as my feed, so total cash output was about zero. My kind of antenna project ;-)

 

[NoRide]

total cash output was about zero.

Can't beat that!