800 MHz Reception In Fringe Signal Areas

[TOUGHLIFE]

Traveling about Southern Nevada and parts of Northwest Arizona I have discovered ways of receiving very distant signals for various 800 MHz systems when being very far from the transmitter sites I wished to monitor. Depending upon my location I can hear both the Sunrise Mountain NSRS site and the Red Mountain SNACC site, about 80-100 miles away from them, well outside of the LV valley and not being located on any mountain peak.
I acquired a 14db gain yagi antenna about three feet in length manufactured by Tram. It is the model 1540 and it was originally designed for AMPS, ETACS, and GSM networks which are all cellular network types. It works very well as a scanner antenna from a fixed location, is lightweight and about three feet long when assembled. Setting it up takes about one minute and I simply attach it to a short lightweight mast and then place the mast into a holder on the side of my motorhome. I paid only $40 for the antenna from Radio World in Boulder City. I regard it as one of the best monitoring accessories that I have ever purchased.

 

[TOUGHLIFE]

800 MHz Fringe Signal Reception

I forgot to mention that I purchased four antennas of the make and model stated in the earlier posting. They work very well so I keep two in my residence to see what simplex signals on 800 MHz I can hear, also applies to the 900 MHz ham band and two in my motor home for field monitoring from a fixed location. I recommend the antenna model for monitoring without any reservation.

 

[BJ_NORTON]

thanks for the heads up TL. I went out to Radio World and got one today. It seems to work ok so far, though I haven't had much of a chance to really work with it yet. The price was $50, and he threw in a BNC adaptor for free. He had a box of 10 that he opened up for me so there are 9 left right now. I set things up for a little test run in the kitchen while I was working on the insides of the pro 2005 that feeds unitrunk. so far so good! I'm getting a 97%-99% decode rate on the NSRS sunrise mtn site, where before off of a little whip antenna I was doing really well to get 80%. also, the antenna isn't really precisely aimed, just pointed in a generally eastern direction and tipped up about 30 degrees so that it isn't pointed at my stove.

 

[TOUGHLIFE]

An antenna that works very well pulling in those weak 800-900 MHz signals depending upon a person's location in relationship to the transmitter site.