Base Antenna

I have the ST-2 hooked to one radio for railroads and the DPD Vertical on another radio. The ST-2 pulls in signals better. My question is since DPD doesn't make the LP base anymore, what would be a good antenna just for the railroads in a base?

Curtis

Pretty much anything as those Log Periodic designs are relatively broadband, if you're just interested in the Railroad radio traffic a "resonant antenna" for that band segment would work the best most likely an Omni directional antenna unless you only intend to receive signals from one fixed point...

If you only want to listen to the 160MHz railroad traffic, pretty much any VHF antenna will work. If you are looking for something to replace a log periodic, you could just go with a VHF Yagi beam. The log periodic antenna are broadbanded, which can be useful, but if you are only listening to a 1MHz wide piece of spectrum, you don't need one. A 3 element VHF Yagi would probably work quite well and provide more gain than a simple vertical. But, as OZ said, an omnidirectional would be best if you are looking for coverage from all points.

Building your own Yagi is quite easy and there are a lot of plans on the internet. A new commercial 3 element Yagi is going to probably start in the upper $100 range, and go higher. An amateur grade 2 meter Yagi would work well, and be cheaper.

Thanks guys. Now if I get a Yagi will it still be good for digital?

Curtis

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Digital is simply a modulation type for an RF signal. Every antenna receives every type of RF, whether digital or analog modulation types are used. So there is no such thing as a "digital" antenna, or one that works better for digital signals (advertisements to the contrary). So will your antenna receive digital? YES!

Honestly you could get away with using an old VHF TV antenna... how well the antenna works is up to you entirely (adjust element length/spacing/direction).

I would recommend building a basic coaxial based dipole antenna or something a little more elaborate like the VK2OI "flowerpot antenna" for your Railroad comms traffic, they are cheap and work really well.

Combine it with some decent RG6 quad core cable (lower loss than RG58 / RG213) and you're good to go!

Arrow Antenna has a 4 element yagi for 162 MHz for like $85 that is very nice. It does well in my attic but my 3 element half square beam out does it a bit.

@co_riff: Hi, Yagi is very good for the Digital signals as it offers the very high directional gain and the noise immunity and it is ideal for very low signal areas and for the fixed installations it will gather the maximum power and increase the sensitivity of antenna.