My Jury Rigged Set-Up

[frankcastle]

OK, I know that most die hard scanner people will probably shriek at the thought of what I have done, but so far it seems to be working pretty well. I spend a lot of time in my office at work. The building is a pole barn type structure. My office is an interior room inside that structure. My 396XT does fairly well most of the time, but since about Thursday of last week my signal strength has been very weak. I think it had a lot to do with the weather, but I decided that I would experiment to try and improve it. The best part is that I already had everything I needed, except a $5 male BNC connector. I took about 30-40 feet of RG-6 coax and put BNC on both ends. I ran that through the wall of my office, and up above near the roof of the building. I attached an old Radio Shack all band rubber ducky to one end and attached my scanner to the other. I immediately went from getting a fluctuating 0-2 bars of signal to getting a constant 3 bars. Now today, the weather has cleared and I am getting a constant full 5 bars. Even though it is working well so far, do I need to be concerned about damaging anything? Thanks.

 

[N_Jay]

Sounds good.

As been stated here many times;
Height is most important,
and there is nothing wrong with RG-6.

If the antenna is outside (I could not tell from your wording) I would protect it from the weather.

 

[frankcastle]

Sounds good.

As been stated here many times;
Height is most important,
and there is nothing wrong with RG-6.

If the antenna is outside (I could not tell from your wording) I would protect it from the weather.

No, everything is inside, mounted at the ceiling just under the roof.

 

[hoser147]

Ive had the same thing set up with a 800mhz rubber ducky for years, except mine is outside, and has a pvc pipe and cap on it. works great. As NJay stated you wont hurt anything.

 

[frankcastle]

Ive had the same thing set up with a 800mhz rubber ducky for years, except mine is outside, and has a pvc pipe and cap on it. works great. As NJay stated you wont hurt anything.

Great, I thought that maybe I was breaking some cardinal rule or something. I figured I could get away with a small hole in the office wall, (I followed the same route that the internet cable goes) but I didn't think that the boss would a appreciate a hole in the roof...lol. That's why I kept it all inside. I am just happy that it improved my signal.

 

[prcguy]

You might improve things a little more by adding ground radials to your remote rubber duck. Use a small hose clamp to attach 3 or 4 wires to the outside of the BNC at the base of the antenna and if the wires are stiff enough you can bend them down a bit to hold up the antenna like a tripod. If there is one specific band you want to improve, make the radials about 1/4 wave long at that frequency. For example. 800MHz make the wires about 3" long, 460MHz about 6" long and VHF hi about 18" long.
prcguy