Building my 1st VHF/UHF antenna...typs of coax to use?

Hello I am a pilot so I am mostly familiar with the air band of VHF at least at this point although my new SDR is letting me explore around other bands. I have done some research on coax and in general is the lower # better? rg-58 not as good as RG-6? I know there are many other things that go into it but in general?

also.. is there any interference with having one ant, within say 10-15 feet of another? plan to build a VHF tuned to the air band area and one tuned to 1090 mhz for ADS-B. I live in an apt and the balcony is only so big

thanks for your help

Brandon

cable question

Brandon, there is no sensible naming convention in the cables, that I have figured out at least. There may be an official industry standard but I don't know about it. Seems like the bigger the diameter of the cable, the higher the number may be, then you have to differentiate between 50 ohm cables and 75ohm cable. If you are intending receive-only use, your choices aren't so tough. Tons of threads on the forum about cables, signal-loss among the various types,etc, plus the age-old discussion of which type is better for scanner use.
I run several different antennas for my scanners, all of them but one use common 75ohm 'tv' cable and I can't notice a big difference in the scanners' reception. )* IF you're into UHF, you'll have to choose more carefully though-higher frequencies suffer from line losses before the VHF will. Also the distance of your cable run will have to be considered.
As far as distance between antennas, I wouldn't think you'd have problems with them on opposite ends of your balcony. I have had antennas 3' apart before, and couldn't notice any loss of reception with scanners.
I've seen some documentation on antennas I purchased before, that said "18" between the antenna and other metal objects. Good luck with your project!
Remember, these comments are one opinion, based on my personal experiences. (big ATC fan here too)

I have some rg-59 and I bought a roll of rg-6 (sat TV cable) The only transmitting I would be doing is with my Icom a6 airband handheld transceiver (talking to my fellow pilot buddies on the air to air chat freqs. what about connecting more than one receiver up to one antenna? I have bought a few RTL-SDR's and I have several computers... will I need to amp the signal if I start connecting 2,3,4 receivers up to the same antenna at the same time?

I run a log periodic from DPD Productions LP 118-1000 and the coax is beldin 9913 (LMR400 similiar). I also have a nice L band aircraft antenna on the same mast about 2 feet apart for ads-b. No problems with interference, I keep the ADS-B coax very short, plug the RTL dongle in and run a long USB (82 feet) to the pc. Not much loss on that setup. Here's a screenshot.

737mech said:

I run a log periodic from DPD Productions LP 118-1000 and the coax is beldin 9913 (LMR400 similiar). I also have a nice L band aircraft antenna on the same mast about 2 feet apart for ads-b. No problems with interference, I keep the ADS-B coax very short, plug the RTL dongle in and run a long USB (82 feet) to the pc. Not much loss on that setup. Here's a screenshot.

Click to expand...

cool what program is that? i used ADSB# and radar scope... that oen seems to show the recption range?

It's Virtual Radar Server I have the receiver ranges all set to green. You can select different altitudes with different colors if you want. I'm just interested in overall range.