I can hear planes but not tower. I live 6 miles from the airport so maybe i;m out of range to hear atc talking to aircraft. I can also hear F-15s and KC-135s out of Seymour Johnson afb which is 64 miles away. I;m using a pro-97 with stock antenna so nothing fancy and that may be the problem.
I can hear planes but not tower. Any ideas?
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Airband better
Don't give up, first try a FM trap inline with your antenna. Antenna-coax-FMtrap-coax-scanner. Lots of members here use them. Improves the airband on many scanners that are overloaded with other stuff you never thought was a problem like FM Radio stations. For the 6 bucks it takes to try it's worth it. Then maybe you will discover you want a better trap. There's a ton of talk about it here just search out FM trap. Parelectronics.com has a very nice filter a bit pricey but worth every penny in my opinion.
Don't give up, first try a FM trap inline with your antenna. Antenna-coax-FMtrap-coax-scanner. Lots of members here use them. Improves the airband on many scanners that are overloaded with other stuff you never thought was a problem like FM Radio stations. For the 6 bucks it takes to try it's worth it. Then maybe you will discover you want a better trap. There's a ton of talk about it here just search out FM trap. Parelectronics.com has a very nice filter a bit pricey but worth every penny in my opinion.
Sounds good but i;m not sure if this would work with my scanner. Because the antenna on my pro-97 uses a BNC connector and its the stock antenna. Any ideas?
I hear the tower and ground controls at Philadelphia Intl. and I'm 10 miles away. My antenna is about 20' above the ground and having done some RFI work at PHL their transmitter antennas are no more than 20' off the ground.
I also hear the aircraft on the ground. In my case the Radio Line of Site (RLOS) is about 11 NM. So if the OP has a decent outdoor antenna, I'm using a discone antenna, good quality feed line and there are no buildings, local higher power transmitters and the terrain isn't a hilly where he sits in a valley and the ground station isn't in a valley he should be able to hear the ground stations farther than 1 mile away.
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Sometimes I like to monitor my local towers, so I have this situation, too. The tower base stations are usually fairly low power. They have to reuse those frequencies at other airports, otherwise they'd go a very far distance at altitude, so they are pretty limited. The antennas are also usually unity gain.
All that, coupled with your scanner's sensitivity and antenna would mean that you'd hear the aircraft fine, but you'd only hear the tower if you were close by (or up in the air, where most of the signal is trying to go). My office is about 2 miles from the airport and I can barely hear the tower with an HT. I need to put it by the window to hear anything. The aircraft come in great if they're in the air. I can't hear them at all if they're on the ground. I can't hear the further airport at all from the office and would need to either be at the airport or at home.
If you can have an outside antenna - a quarter wave would be fine - get it up as high as you can, use cable that's got lower loss characteristics and I'd bet you would start hearing the tower.
Good luck and good listening!
All that, coupled with your scanner's sensitivity and antenna would mean that you'd hear the aircraft fine, but you'd only hear the tower if you were close by (or up in the air, where most of the signal is trying to go). My office is about 2 miles from the airport and I can barely hear the tower with an HT. I need to put it by the window to hear anything. The aircraft come in great if they're in the air. I can't hear them at all if they're on the ground. I can't hear the further airport at all from the office and would need to either be at the airport or at home.
If you can have an outside antenna - a quarter wave would be fine - get it up as high as you can, use cable that's got lower loss characteristics and I'd bet you would start hearing the tower.
Good luck and good listening!
Later on I might try the Centerfire VHF Airband Base Station Scanner Antenna from amazon. What do you think? I;m using my pro-97 because it no longer work for fire and police because my county has gone digital. So I have my pro-197 for that. Now I have never used a outside antenna so sorry for the dumb question. But how do you go about connecting the coax cable to the BNC connector on the pro-97? Thanks.
Connectors
They make coax connectors that are BNC. http://www.amazon.com/Ideal-Bnc-Compression-Connector-RG59/dp/B001UFJK1O They are also found at Lowes or Frys or Home depot.
As far as the trap you can try that with adaptors BNC to F type.
They make coax connectors that are BNC. http://www.amazon.com/Ideal-Bnc-Compression-Connector-RG59/dp/B001UFJK1O They are also found at Lowes or Frys or Home depot.
As far as the trap you can try that with adaptors BNC to F type.
Thanks.
My scanner antenna is a discone mounted on the chimney about 25' above ground. Selfridge (MTC) 18 mi. east ATIS and Detroit City (DET) 18 mi. southeast ATIS are heard. Pontiac (PTK) 13 mi. west ATIS cannot be heard. The reason is because the terrain drops away to the east and south of me but there is a ridge to the west. VHF is pretty much line of sight. However, a friend 1/2 mi. south of me can hear PTK ATIS just fine... but he has a 100' tower. 
Universal Radio and DX Engineering both have a good assortment of antennas, coax, adapters.
Universal Radio and DX Engineering both have a good assortment of antennas, coax, adapters.
There are several frequencies that are used at airports. If it is an airport like PHL, PNE, JFK and so on they have 1 or 2 frequencies to control aircraft landing and taking off from the airport. This is call the "Local Control" frequency AKA tower frequency. These transmitters are all 10 watts. the antennas are any where from 15' to 40' off of the ground for the most part. They are not reused in the same general vicinity where several airports are located. For example one of the tower frequencies at PHL is 118.5 MHz. the next closest FAA facilities are in Niagara Falls, NY, Norfolk, VA, Bedford, MA and Cleveland, OH.
The other common frequency used at airports is called ground control. A common frequency is 121.900 MHz. In recent changes the power output of many of these ground control transmitters has been lowered to 2.5 watts. This is due to RFI between closely located airports, about 60 miles separation.
Here where I work at the FAA Tech Center the Atlantic City airport ground control is on 121.900 MHz. So is PHL, Baltimore, Md and 40 other facilities in the northeast. Ground control is engineered to be used for a radius of about 2 miles around the transmitter/receiver.
At other uncontrolled airports you have frequencies called unicom or airport advisory frequencies. these are on a frequency like 122.800 MHz. These frequencies will be used in the general vicinity of several airports within about 1 - 20 or more miles of each other.
So it depends on how the frequencies will be used as to how close two facilities will use the same frequency.
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