I have tried many different antennas with my Pro 197. Discones, scantennas and even dedicated antennas with a triplexer. I receive everything in a 60 mile radius fine in Greenville county SC. I wanted to clean up my roof and the one on the garage so I went with the Larsen tri-bander on a ground plane nmo and on the garage I put the 154 vertical on a ground plane mount. I receive just as much on these two antennas as I did with specialized antennas. Airband to 800 public safety comes in great on both. They are cabled with RG6 solid copper quad shield. So I guess my question is, do we over think antennas? It seems a simple ground plane antenna cut to your lowest frequncey will pick up anything you need.
Antenna observations
- Thread starter KMG54
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A 102" whip works amazingly well through 900 mhz....
!02" whip, would that be just stuck in the air on say a mirror mount?
No.. A pipe with a pipe cap with a 1/2" hole in it with the 3/8 24 - so 239 mount...
Hmmm, hadn't thought about that set up....Wonder how it would perform say against a Discone?
Idk i was amazed at how well it works on 124.5 and 379.2 atis 162 wx broadcasts from 40-60 miles away 800 mhz from 15-20 miles away... Its mounted at about 18 ft at the bottom of the 102....
Interesting......That might be worth looking into
Lots of capture area...
True, i knew there was a reason i came here... Do you run any type ground plane under it?
scover5555
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I have an old 5/8 VHF-Hi that I had tuned to 155 Mhz for my police two way in the 90's. It's a trunk lip and use it now with my scanner in the car. Pick up low band CHP through 800 trunking with no problem.
prcguy
Member
Ok Thanks
Ok, this has me wondering now, so I guess it is experiment time. The ST2 is going back up next weekend and will be cabled with Belden RG 11 and PPC compression fittings. Also a PCtel max rad 800 MHz mobile on a mobile to base ground plane mount with Belden 8267 coax and N connectors to a comet 413 diplexer.Both will be 25 feet up. This week I will take note of what I hear and signal strength on my pro 197 with the Maxrad 154 MHz mobile on a ground plane mount with RG6 quad shield currently 25 feet up. Next week I will try the new setup and compare.
Keep us posted on your findings...
mmckenna
I ♥ Ø
N3JI
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This is real similar to a coaxial dipole, which is the basis for the coaxial collinears that I have been building. I've have extremely good luck with them, and my 8 element cut for 850 is also resonant on 450 (got lucky there). It works so-so on VHF (enough to pull in many non-local NOAA signals). I don't monitor anything on VHF-low, but I would guess it would be pretty ineffective there. You might try Googling "Coaxial Dipole" -- you might be surprised at how popular it actually is (almost all of the marine and amateur VHF/UHF antennas are some form of this).
Ya i have made quite a few of those from coax and pvc pipe... Its fun to goof around to see what works !
I broke my fiberglass 2 ft scanner antenna on the work truck.soo I replaced it with a 2 ft cb antenna, it is working as well as a fiberglass scanner antenna did,for themost part. It seems to be doing better on state dot at 47 mhz and hears the uhf p25 system the same
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