Active antennas for HT's and intermod problems.

[Medic115]

One of my sons lives in a rural area, He has had to install a cell repeater in his home, plus he lives between a Cell tower and a wireless tv broadcast site. The cell and TV towers are less ten 2 miles away in opposing directions. He wonders if a active antenna would help him monitor the 2m nets, as he is also studying for his Ham ticket. I told him this would cause more intermodal problems with his UV-5r+.
You folks know more about the intermod problems with this little radio.
Also his rental place is steel sided and roofed.
Any ideas?

 

[vagrant]

If he is having problems with intermod now when listening to a particular repeater, it is being caused at the repeater site by an offending system. Nothing for him to fix on his end.

If he is having trouble listening to a particular repeater due to distance, he can purchase an improved antenna for his HT and or connect his HT to an external antenna. He is renting, so an external antenna may not be an option. I have found a Diamond SRH77CA antenna to be a significant improvement over the stock antenna on those inexpensive Baofeng radios.

 

[LtDoc]

If he has a steel roof, then a typical mag-mount mobile antenna should be better than any indoor antenna.
- 'Doc