dumb question probably

[marvelusmarvcus]

i live near a lot of very high towers, does this improve or degrade my scanning signal?

why if i accidentally connected my pro-106 to one of the cables running up the towers? lol

 

[davidgcet]

probably actually makes your reception worse as it increases the noise floor.

hooking to one of the lines would be a BAD idea. if it is in use you will blow up your scanner and be on the hook for several thousand bucks to replace the entire line.

 

[ST-Bob]

Whenever you're near a high-powered transmitter (I live within 2 miles of a 500 watt NOAA weather broadcaster and 2 high-powered 152 and 158 MHz pager transmitters) you get reduced sensitivity near the frequencies being used and inter-modulation distortion on other nearby frequencies. This often sounds like you're listening to the pager or weather station whenever your scanner stops on another unrelated frequency.

Notch filters (fixed or adjustable) can reduce or eliminate these problems at a cost of $70 to $80 per offending frequency. Multiple notch filters can be cascaded to selectively attenuate multiple individual frequencies without negatively affecting other desired frequencies too much. The dynamic range of scanners is very broad. Their AGCs can usually handle wide ranges of signal strength but every circuit has its limits. Overloading the front-end of your scanner will reduce overall sensitivity and cause other problems like inter-modulation and false signal detection overriding the squelch control.

I hope you were being facetious when you mentioned hooking up to the tower's guy-wires...

 

[marvelusmarvcus]

well, my reception is surprisingly good even with all of the nearby towers.

there is one tower near me that i believe is unused. this was used years ago for a radio channel i think. this was the only one i thought i might use, if i had permission of course.

 

[W2NJS]

"Use" of a radio tower can, I say CAN, run in the range of $10,000 per month for rental. No one is going to let you use their tower, be it currently in use or not, for private reception only, because the project is fraught with danger of many kinds for the tower owner. Ham groups often get free use of commercial towers by smart politicking, friends in the communications business, etc. but even then they're usually expected to be covered by their own hazard insurance. You can't climb the tower on your own, but you have to hire special people to do it for you. Last time I was involved with such a group they were getting several thousand bucks per day, so as you can see it's a serious undertaking in all of its aspects.