Hello, I have a TV antenna tower it's probably about 30 feet tall. Am I able to just mount the mag mount that I use for my car up on top of the mast? I have about a 40 foot cord on it. and If I create a metal plate for it to magnet mount to on top of the mast? Will that receive signals from further away? Being up 30 feet in the air? How far do you think I could monitor with a mag mount antenna 30 feet up?
Thanks,
Sorry all I am new to this external antenna stuff.
goaheadover, don't apologize for not knowing about external antennas and stuff, we're just having a little fun. In a nutshell and not to get too technical, a mobile antenna like a magmount is using the car body as part of the antenna so to speak, I don't want to get too technical so people will start splitting hairs here but some people use a magnetic mount antenna on a filing cabinet, a large pie dish, you could say it grounds it.
W5lz was being very entertainingly sarcastic but actually he hit the nail on the head, you need the radials or the other half of the antenna. There are actually mobile antennas that you can buy a kit with radials that turns it into a ground plane.
Don't know what your budget is but you've got this TV Tower and you can use it for an external antenna, surf the Internet on sites like the antenna Farm and pick out a nice inexpensive ground plane that would cover VHF High, UHF and 7 - 800 megahertz. You're only listening, not transmitting. The cord you are referring to it's called coaxial cable.
If you were doing a CB radio 27 megahertz antenna you could get away with RG58. With the higher frequencies in the 400 to 900 megahertz ranges you need low loss coax so as not to lose signal through the cable. You get what you pay for when it comes to low loss coax but again you are only listening. I like lmr400 because it works well as opposed to its price.
You always want to get the most optimal antenna setup that you can, that's the point of having an external antenna. Some people will recommend a discone antenna and if you were to listen to VHF low 30 - 50 megahertz that's a good choice and it covers the whole range.
There's pros and cons, everybody has a different opinion.
I don't think it's a good idea to put the mag mount mobile antenna on the tower. You can do much better... Bob.
