Hi. So now I have the Pro-106 up and running. On some of the channels it sound real garbled. I was wondering.. Would a better antenna help?? I have a handheld now with a 800 MHz rubber antenna now. Thanks..
Perhaps, but there's no real guarantee with the information provided. If you can provide your location as well as what you're trying to pick up we can better understand what's going on and provide you with some suggestions on how to fix things.
If you're listening to one of the various simulcast systems that are pretty common now days, a good antenna may actually make things worse. This would be due to what's called "multi-path distortion" that's where the signals from more than one tower are strong enough to cause your scanner to distort the signals when they mix together. In this situation, if you can reduce the signal strength so your scanner will generally only hear the signals from a single tower things will work fine, but with a powerful antenna that will pick up several towers strongly you'll end up with garbled transmissions, drop outs, and generally weak sounding signals (although in actually they're too strong).
If you're close to some strong signals (FM or TV broadcast stations, NOAA transmitters, paging transmitters, or even nearby cell phone towers) you may be getting signal overload from those strong stations that is causing your scanner to overload and work poorly on weaker signals. A good antenna may make those strong signals stronger, causing more issues. A good filter to reduce the strong signals may allow your scanner to pick up the weaker ones better.