Scanner Antennas

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pmartin1

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Can anyone tell me what a good Scanner Antenna for a pickup truck mite be have been reading about fire sticks but haven't talked to anyone about them i need one with 3/8 24 thread i had one with 2 loads on it and stainless steal rods. Can sone one tell me Please Pmartin1 Thanks
 

n5ims

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More information please. Antennas are specific to the bands you need them to work on. A great antenna for 27 MHz may work very poorly trying to pick up an 800 MHz signal and vice versa. There are many good scanner antennas, but until we know what frequency band(s) you listen to it's very hard to give you anything useful.

One suggestion I can provide based on the currently provided information is to have you check out the antenna article in the RR WIKI (Category:Antennas - The RadioReference Wiki). It may help you with some of your answers.
 

n5ims

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I need one for all bands 25 - 1000 mhz

That will force you to use a minimal gain, but wide band antenna (works, but only OK throughout that range). Try the Austin Spectra (Austin Spectra Mobile Antenna) since it covers VHF-Low through 800 bands. If you can live without good receiption on VHF-Low (30 - 60 MHz or so) consider the Larson Tri-band antenna (Larsen NMO150/450/800 Tri Band VHF, UHF, 800 MHz Motorola Style Antenna | TESSCO). Both get pretty good reviews, but take care with screwing the Austin Spectra onto the mount as folks report issues with the tab on the NMO mount failing when screwing down the antenna (mostly due to the NMO Adjustment ring being missing or not properly adjusted).

Both of those antennas use a standard NMO mount (available for a drilled hole; trunk lip; "L bracket" for mounting by the hood, trunk, or other locations, magnetic mount, mirror mount, roof rack mount, multi-way adjustable mount, and who knows how many other variations). Using that type of a mount will allow you a wide selection of antennas should you decide to change it out later since many different antennas are made for it.

I believe that the firestick is a standard CB antenna and would work well for VHF-Low, but not so well as you move up in frequency. If you search around, you may find some antennas that use the 3/8 x 24 stud mount you talked about, but those would mostly be CB or HF Ham antennas and not much better than your firestick for scanning.

One thing to do at very low cost is to simply try the firestick to see how it works out (you may need an adapter to convert from the plug on your firestick to what's needed for your scanner, but that should only be a few bucks). If it gets you what you want, save your money for something else (like a down payment on a second scanner). If not, you'll know that the new antenna will probably be a good investment.
 
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