RS 800 antenna

[holeinace]

I was fooling around and instead of switching antennas to listen to county fire at 155 I left my RS 800 antenna on. I think it did just as well as my telescoping antenna. Are there any other bands that this antenna works well on? or is it just trial and error?

 

[hiegtx]

I was fooling around and instead of switching antennas to listen to county fire at 155 I left my RS 800 antenna on. I think it did just as well as my telescoping antenna. Are there any other bands that this antenna works well on? or is it just trial and error?

The R/S 800 works best, of course, on 800mhz. Works pretty well on Uhf public safety for me. However, I find that I lose a number of Vhf-high agencies that I can hear, with the same scanner, from the same location, if I use the stock antenna (which is definitely not the greatest on 800) or one of the Diamond antennas (RH77CA or RH771). I keep the R/S 800 on my 396 since that's my grab & go scanner for my daily commute. It's loaded with about 20 trunked systems, and the other systems of interest are strong enough to hear anyway. Outside the metro area, where there is little 800, I switch the 396 to a Diamond.

 

[KT4HX]

You will find that the RS800 does quite well on VHF and UHF for your local systems and maybe even neighboring counties, depending on distance from their towers. I pretty much use it full time when I am out and about in town because it will allow me to listen to my city system (VHF conventional), county system (EDACS 800) and county just across the river (UHF conventional) without swapping antennas. However, if I wanted to monitor some other counties further away from me, I would switch to a dedicated VHF/UHF antenna such as the Diamond RH77CA as noted by hiegtx. Obviously it is a compromise in VHF/UHF, but I've found it does a pretty decent job overall.

 

[tneff]

I pick up the 3 surrounding counties around me using the RS 800 on my hand helds, everything is within 30-40 miles. Have been impressed with the coverage I get here with them, using a Pro 97 and a Pro 93.