Homebrew Scanner Antenna?

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eahuntley

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Anyone know of any good plans for a homebrew scanner base antenna? I'm mostly interested in 100-200mhz and 400-500mhz.

I don't have a whole lot of space, so the smaller the better.
 
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N1BHH

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I have built many different antennas for scanners. One that I built was made of twin lead for the Low and High Bands. It was simply a center fed dipole. It was mounted on a mahogany pole up a tall tree in the back yard. It worked wonders, and was fed by some CATV coax, buried in the ground. I lived in Rockland, MA. and could always hear Eastern Connecticut and a lot of New Hampshire and Maine on Low Band every day. On good days I could hear into New York and Pennsylvania, when everyone else couldn't hear the other end of the county.
 

eahuntley

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I have built many different antennas for scanners. One that I built was made of twin lead for the Low and High Bands. It was simply a center fed dipole. It was mounted on a mahogany pole up a tall tree in the back yard. It worked wonders, and was fed by some CATV coax, buried in the ground. I lived in Rockland, MA. and could always hear Eastern Connecticut and a lot of New Hampshire and Maine on Low Band every day. On good days I could hear into New York and Pennsylvania, when everyone else couldn't hear the other end of the county.

So, which bands did that work well on? Is that the same twinlead dipole arrangement that is linked in this thread?


Edit: Woops, nevermind. I guess that was a J-pole made of twinlead.
 
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blueangel-eric

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Anyone know of any good plans for a homebrew scanner base antenna? I'm mostly interested in 100-200mhz and 400-500mhz.

I don't have a whole lot of space, so I'd rather not go with anything like a dipole.

how could a dipole take up space? I have two in my bedroom in my apartment. one made of aluminum tubing and a similar one with copper tubing. and another that is a Off Fed Center Dipole that is aluminum tubing used for portable base station setups. All three are homemade. I mounted mine on poles attached to camera tripods and the like. works well. the tubing is 1/2 inch and broadbanded for scanning use.
Eric Burris
 
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blueangel-eric

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Couple of links
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Homebrewed_Off-Center_Fed_Dipole
http://www.harfordemcomm.org/files/twinlead.pdf

Off-center has good comments, on my list to build.

Twinlead is for 2m Hand held replacement of the rubber ducky. So easy to make it worth a try. For your frequency of interest it might be useful.

mike

i just threw away my twinlead jpole for 2 meters. it's just too narrowbanded for scanner use. the reception was lousy on the RR band when yet my dipoles work good for both and even UHF.

Eric Burris
 

eahuntley

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Sorry, when I wrote that for some reason I was thinking of the HF bands. Yes, a Dipole would be great for 2 meters and higher.

how could a dipole take up space? I have two in my bedroom in my apartment. one made of aluminum tubing and a similar one with copper tubing. and another that is a Off Fed Center Dipole that is aluminum tubing used for portable base station setups. All three are homemade. I mounted mine on poles attached to camera tripods and the like. works well. the tubing is 1/2 inch and broadbanded for scanning use.
Eric Burris
 

zz0468

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A simple high band groundplane will work fine. It's almost all I ever used for scanning in that frequency range until I switched to discones. J poles are ok for single band operation, but just ok. I never much cared for them.
 

blueangel-eric

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I was thinking about another unit I had seen that is a 2m/440, dualband jpole, the link was just a quick grab. Arrow antennas make a dual band jpole that could be easily built from scratch. Check here,for a pic a dual band jpole yes they do exist.

yes i forgot about the Arrow version. I have a homebuilt copy of the Arrow dualband jpole. works good for VHF not sure about UHF as its on a 2m radio.

eric Burris
 

eahuntley

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A simple high band groundplane will work fine. It's almost all I ever used for scanning in that frequency range until I switched to discones. J poles are ok for single band operation, but just ok. I never much cared for them.

When you say "high band", what frequency should it be designed for? Are discones typically the best for scanner antennas? Is it possible to home brew one?
 

joetnymedic

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I made the of center dipole from the plans right here on rr.com. so did cougar06512. I pull distant stations on both uhf and vhfr like nothing.The antenna is great for scanner use as far as I'm concerned

joe
 

KC0QNB

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When you say "high band", what frequency should it be designed for? Are discones typically the best for scanner antennas? Is it possible to home brew one?
High band is usually 150-170mHz, as opposed to low band, 30-50mHz, but then some consider 800mHz to be uhf high band, you decide.
Yea you can homebrew a discone, there are calculators available on the web that give you the dimensions, I bought mine readymade because the hombrew discone looks very labor intensive. Here is one example I found after Googleing homebrew discone and scrolling a bit look here. The first link I clicked is here, scroll down for discone.zip

C'mon guys you all obviously have internet access there are a lot of things you can google on your own, then if you can't find what you are looking for come back to the RR forum, and ask, try it sometime. rant over
 
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