Inside Antenna suggestions

I want to buy an inside antenna for my apartment so I can pick up the conventional channels better. Some frequencies work better in one area of my apartment than in other areas..

I found this one on Ebay

New Super Scanner One Base Scanner Antenna New Four Separate Antennas Inside | eBay

Scanner Master only has one advertised that I saw.

Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hmmm... wonder if these are some flavor of vertical dipoles, or ??? No ground plane visible, but he makes a rather big deal of it.

DPD Antennas

Check out DPD Productions they make excellent antennas, some inside versions.
DPD Productions - Antennas & Accessories for the RF Professional & Radio Hobbyist

73, Rex

I've come to embrace band-specific antennas. For Airband/VHF, I use 49" Larson's, they work GREAT. But, you can never have enough antennas, not in this hobby.

radio said:

I want to buy an inside antenna for my apartment so I can pick up the conventional channels better. Some frequencies work better in one area of my apartment than in other areas..

I found this one on Ebay

New Super Scanner One Base Scanner Antenna New Four Separate Antennas Inside | eBay

Click to expand...

I am considering buying this same scanner antenna on eBay from Seller: Lowbander. How it is if you purchased it for clarity & signal strength in the band ranges that is is meant for & was specially built for?

New Super Scanner One Base Scanner Antenna New Four Separate Antennas Inside | eBay

I am just waiting a tiny bit longer to buy this exact model from Lowbander on eBay to use & try out for the first time ever for my digital public safety scanner because I need it to be built with a 50 foot coaxial cable attached instead of the 20 foot which I contacted him about last week just to see if it was possible or available with the 50 foot.

Lowbander's response: "Thanks, for your request! I am working on launching a 50' model this Saturday. Same antenna but with longer coax line. It will be in the $50 range. I haven't made final decision on price, but it will be as low as I can make it and still cover costs. This antenna is so popular I can hardly keep up with the orders. Please check back on Ebay Saturday afternoon 5/22/2016 for the new model."

I looked again today & so far, still not listed for purchase with the 50 foot attached coax cable. I am going to keep watching for the perfect time that he does list it if he is really going to offer it with a 50 foot coax cable & try to jump onto it so that I can truly see if this is a well built & well signal strength antenna for strong clear signals on my scanner which I have been struggling to find anyone scanner antenna out there that does this & amazes me with the signal strength & clarity of what I am picking up/receiving on my scanner.

Just remember that for any coax run, especially a 50-foot run, you want coax that is as low-loss as possible. The higher the frequency band you are receiving, the more loss there will be in your coax run. And of course, you want to minimize the length of the run. Does the seller indicate what coax he is supplying? You might even want to use your own low-loss coax if that's not what he has.

This chart might give you an idea of the losses involved: http://www.w4rp.com/ref/coax.html

N0GTG said:

Just remember that for any coax run, especially a 50-foot run, you want coax that is as low-loss as possible. The higher the frequency band you are receiving, the more loss there will be in your coax run. And of course, you want to minimize the length of the run. Does the seller indicate what coax he is supplying? You might even want to use your own low-loss coax if that's not what he has.

This chart might give you an idea of the losses involved: http://www.w4rp.com/ref/coax.html

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info there.

Yes, the seller Lowbander on eBay say that he uses, (low loss RG-8X coax, which is 50 Ohm coax) for this specific scanner antenna that he makes & other similar ones too that his customers apparently use & get usefulness from due to his 100% positive feedback score on eBay & his 50 years of making Ham Scanner Antennas as he states in all of his scanner antenna listings on eBay.

One would be pretty stupid to pay $35 for this antenna when the same thing (a dipole) could be made w/ 4-cond rotator control cord (cost about $5). I made the very same thing in 1988 for use w/ a Pro-2004 R/S scanner. I cut one wire for 27mhz, the next for mid VHF (150mhz), and another wire for 440mhz, and the final for 800mhz. Then I added about 20 ft of rg-58 coax at the center and hung it as a vertical outside a window in the house I lived in.

The cutting of the lengths are not all that critical as we are only talking about receive, not transmitting over this antenna. At the time I recall once hearing a lop-sided conversation on CB and VHF. Someone was lost up by Garden of the Gods (N Colo Spgs) and the police were trying to find them. A CBer w/ a base station was talking over the phone to the police.

When I had to have an indoor antenna some years ago I bought a outdoor discone and built a floor stand for it out of 2 x 4" lumber. It performed fairly well, not as well as the one I have up on the roof right now, but much better than anything I used inside a building. I put it on an upper floor and near a window. A discone has no gain, but does a decent job from 39 MHz all the way up to 940 MHz. I'm a little leary of antennas where I can't see the metal inside that claim wide band performance. You don't know if they are using coils or whatever in the design. Like someone suggested, it might even be a simple dipole inside, you just don't know.

It is important to take time to select the right antenna as it is the one component reception that is responsible for well more than half of your reception. Some would say it is closer to 100%.

radio said:

I want to buy an inside antenna for my apartment so I can pick up the conventional channels better. Some frequencies work better in one area of my apartment than in other areas..

I found this one on Ebay

New Super Scanner One Base Scanner Antenna New Four Separate Antennas Inside | eBay

Scanner Master only has one advertised that I saw.

Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

Click to expand...

I used a Diamond X50a in my living room. It's only 5'6" so I put 10" of mast into a dirt filled planter and mounted the x50a to it, then stuck it behind a recliner with 50' of lmr400 connected. Easily heard simplex Uhf comms 25-30miles away. :wink: 73, n9zas

The claim is that there is a ground plane, so it's coil at the bottom?

There are designs that do not require a ground plane, but how can you say there is when it is physically absent?

I must be missing something.

NC1 said:

The claim is that there is a ground plane, so it's coil at the bottom?

There are designs that do not require a ground plane, but how can you say there is when it is physically absent?

I must be missing something.

Click to expand...

The function of coils is to "fool" the radio signals that the antenna is actually longer, closer to the actual wavelength of the signals. I don't have any idea how a ground plane can be put inside a narrow tube, which is what this antenna looks like. On the face of it and without flipping through my antenna book it sounds like a claim I would call into question.

I certainly agree with that statement without more detail on the design. I wouldn't call the seller a snake oil salesman just yet, but it is quite a claim and does not jive with what I know.

Using a coil won't give it a ground plane that I can figure, it would just electrically lengthen the active element like you said.

The jury is out on this one.

gewecke said:

I used a Diamond X50a in my living room. It's only 5'6" so I put 10" of mast into a dirt filled planter and mounted the x50a to it, then stuck it behind a recliner with 50' of lmr400 connected. Easily heard simplex Uhf comms 25-30miles away. :wink: 73, n9zas

Click to expand...

You had 50 feet of LMR 400 running inside the house? If I tried that, my wife would kill me. Probably twice.

Tricks for running coax:

Get the coax up or down through the back of a closet. Nobody will see it then.

Run it horizontally if you can through the attic, basement, or crawl space. If you can't do this, run it along the baseboard, carefully using staples or wire clamps to attach it.

I had to run coax into our basement through a corrugated metal/poured cement floor. I used the cold air return to the furnace as a giant conduit. Peeled up a corner of the sheet metal plate in the attic and the basement. I removed the grills at the top and bottom on the main floor so I could stick my arm in to fish the coax.

bharvey2 said:

You had 50 feet of LMR 400 running inside the house? If I tried that, my wife would kill me. Probably twice.

Click to expand...

Both EX wives are dead ... No I didn't do it. So I can do what I wish! . 73, n9zas

In India, during the valve radio era, outside antennas were out of scope due to rains and tropical weather.
What we did was indoor long wire antenna with inverted L technique.

See this blog and watch how the copper mesh antenna was used

``Mysurean Musings: Bush Radio and its Magic Eye

A very thin single conductor wire several hundred or thousand meters long was woven into a very fine mesh. Both sides had plastic clamps with springs. We stretched it near the window or balcony. A lead in wire took the signal to the antenna socket or port of the radio. The earth or ground terminal of radio was earthed.

Wonder if a J-pole would work as good as a vertical dipole? Although, I think a J-pole is more for TXing. My friend and I used J-poles with some green dot VHF radios and I could talk to him about 2 miles away very well in the house.

I've been contemplating building a vertical multiband dipole for shortwave that would run next to the house. MULTI BAND HF FAN DIPOLE ANTENNA DESIGN