My Radio Desk (A Work in Progress)

[N2ICV]

Hi all
Ok this is what im up to over here, I am building a radio desk . Attached is the plan for it. (still a working on it)
I am still working on where to put the antennas ( I.E. buy a tower or try to put all of them on the house chimmey) .
Let me know what you think.

 

[N2ICV]

The Antennas now/ what do I need?

This is what im using for my antenna setup now.
Diamond
V2000 Tri band (6m/2m/70cm) omnidirectional feed with a Comet CFX-514
D130NJ Discone (Scanners)
using LMR400

Slinky Antenna (HF)
using RS RG58 ( yea I know, its junk!)

I got the scanners on a Stridsberg Engineering 4 Port MCA204M VHF/UHF Receiver Multicoupler going to the D130NJ Discone (Scanners).
The TS-2000 is using the rest.

On the Diamond V2000 Tri band im thinking of spliting the VHf side of the CFX-514 to a 3 port antenna switch. To feed the TS-2000 , VHf ASTRO Spectra ,and the Vhf Spectra .
On the UHf side spliting with a 2 port antenna switch . To feed the TS-2000 and the UHf ASTRO Spectra .
from that feed (coming out of the UHf ASTRO Spectra) a 2 port antenna switch , 1 side to the V2000, 1 side to a 460MHz antenna.

Now what do I buy for....
Antenna for the CB?
Antenna for the 222mhz CDM1550?
Antenna for 900mhz?
Antenna for GMRS (460 Mhz)?

 

[kb5udf]

GMRS Antenna

Hi there,

I use the following, and it works quite well for the price:

Tram 1486.

Nice radio setup. One suggestion I'd make (realizing you'll probably get a million)
is replacing the HF slinky with some kind of dipole, like a G5RV if you are into
ham stuff. Having both, the dipole will vastly outperform the slinky, which is a fine
backup antenna.

JB

 

[N2ICV]

Hi there,

I use the following, and it works quite well for the price:

Tram 1486.

Nice radio setup. One suggestion I'd make (realizing you'll probably get a million)
is replacing the HF slinky with some kind of dipole, like a G5RV if you are into
ham stuff. Having both, the dipole will vastly outperform the slinky, which is a fine
backup antenna.

JB

Thanks for the suggestions.
I dont need alot of gain on GMRS , but Ill add that to the list of mybe's!
So you like the G5RV? I was going to get the Buckmaster 7-Band OCF Antenna.

 

[K9WG]

Looks good except for radio 'A' ......

 

[kb5udf]

Either Or

I've used G5's and similar OCF dipoles. I'd get fairly similar performance in ham bands.
And both should do reasonably well for general purpose SWL, all the more so if you have
some sort of tuner.

Some adverts claim superior performance for OCF types, or so-called Windoms, but I'm not
sure that is actually so. I'll sure you'll have no shortage of opinions.

Personally, I like the G5RV from RadioWAVZ. One advantage is that it is easy to deploy
as a inverted V, which fits my space needs well.

JB

 

[Skypilot007]

I'm doing the same thing over here at the moment. Re-arranging so to speak.

As for your setup..on the HF side of things the I-max 2000 verticle antenna works great for me on 10 meters and CB with no tuner. I also use it on 12 and 15 meters with the tuner. On 17 meters its a toss up between the wire (alpha delta DX-CC) and the imax both using a tuner. I'd highly recomend the imax if you're in the market for a CB/10 meter antenna. They are a bit big at 21ft tall.

The Tram 1486 antenna mentioned works pretty good too. I have one currently mounted in my attic cut for GMRS connected to a home brewed repeater on 550 currently off line.

As for 900MHz, I went with an MCS2000. No internal mods needed, just need to do the bandsplit mod to cps and you're good. Only down side to these most are trunked radios and they don't have MDC signaling in the flash. Other than that the unit I have seems to rx and tx very well at the top and botton of the band. I was going to make an antenna but I broke down and bought a True gain 12 element yagi off e-bay for $50.00. It works well and seems worth the $50.

I'm curious about the CDM on 220. I have several on UHF and like them alot. Must be an imported radio or an LTR trunked? I don't have any 220 stuff yet, kinda skipped that band all together. I did see some MCS2000 220MHz on ebay a while back but I passed them up at the time.

Good luck with the new setup.