Best VHF Air Rec Base Antenna

[Usnradioman1987]

Hello.

I'm looking for the best VHF Air 118-136MHZ receive only base antenna.
Am I stuck with line of sight only? Or can I go slightly above the horizon ?
I can have it mounted on my roof . Any Ideas?
I want to receive a RCAG 20 miles away and hear ATC controller .
Also, is a Directional Antenna better since I know what direction the transmitter is at.

Thank you
\
Tony

 

[popnokick]

In general, any aircraft on RCAG or ARTCC freqs that is airborne is going to be a very strong and easy to receive signal. However, if you use a directional antenna you will reduce the signal strength in the directions where the antenna is NOT pointed, and may miss some comms. So avoid directional antennas. But definitely mount the antenna on the roof as high as you can... it will increase your chances of hearing the ATC controller. ATC transmitters are often located many miles away from the ARTCC and use remote base transmitters. For obvious reasons they also use antennas that point the RF energy to the sky... not the ground. So hearing the controller will depend how far you are from the transmitter (not necessarily the ARTCC building) and intervening terrain. They don't need to talk to the ground. I'm fortunate to have a remote base RCAG site on a mountaintop near me, so hearing the controllers is easy. What antenna to use? Many discones are available. Also check out the DPD Productions Omni-X antenna. Both types of antennas are omnidirectional and good performers for aircraft in both air bands. Use good low-loss coaxial cable to the antenna... doesn't matter whether 75 or 50 ohm... your receiver won't care. I use 75 ohm RG6 quad shielded... the same stuff they use for satellite dish installations and cable TV. It's less expensive and more flexible than high grade 50 ohm cable, simpler to put connectors on, and overall simpler to work with. You can buy it, the connectors, and installation tools at any home / hardware store. Don't use the cheap RG6... get the better stuff.

 

[mark432k]

I don't know if it's the best, but I'm very pleased with my DPD productions air band antenna.

 

[Usnradioman1987]

thank you so much

 

[Ubbe]

I've been to some civil aircraft remote stations and they use standard vertical dipoles. The airplanes straight up can be received with a wet noodle but the ones the furthest away at the horizon have the weakest signals and needs to have the most gain from the antenna.

When I was doing my military service in the airforce I did radio maintenance and their remote sites used dipoles for transmit, one for VHF and one for UHF and used discones for receive.

A directional antenna usually have lots of small directional loobs pointing everywhere like a tentacle so it should be fine for general use to receive aircrafts and to get the extra signal needed to receive a ground station from a particular direction. It's probably a very expensive antenna, 118-137 MHz 11 Element Air Traffic Over Flight Control Yagi Antenna – TACO Antenna but you could probably build your own directional antenna for 118-137MHz. A dipole are 120cm long at 125MHz. You'll need a reflector element slightly longer and probably 2-3 director elements slightly shorter. There are yagi calculators on the web to get the correct measurements and the usuable frequency range are usually 10% of the frequency, +/-6MHz in this case.

/Ubbe

 

[FedFyrGuy]

Made in the USA:

https://centerfireantenna.com/aircraft-band-antennas/

Worth a try.....

 

[lmrtek]

You can make a 1\4 wave ground plane for a few cents that will work as well as anything

 

[cmdrwill]

You can make a 1\4 wave ground plane for a few cents that will work as well as anything

Agreed....