antenna question

[xpawel15x]

I was wondering if you wrap a long wire around ur handheld antenna, would the wire help to receive signals?

 

[Colin9690]

I read in a Police Call book once that if you take some thin wire, and wrap it around you antenna, and put part of the wire near or out a window that you can increase low band reception. You might give it a try.

 

[k9rzz]

For the lower frequencies, yes. It should help.

John K9RZZ

 

[mciupa]

If you are feeling creative , the WIKI lists a number of links for projects , have a look :
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/HF_Antennas#Homebrew_and_Technical

 

[N1508J]

Malarky! While in some rare cases this transformer action may slightly improve a specific frequency's reception, you can bet the majority of the others will be degraded. You would have better luck simply taking the wire and attaching it to the antenna input jack where your hand held antenna attached! Remember, antennas are tuned circuits! For shortwave reception...(1.6 thru 30Mhz) a long wire of arbitrary lenght will generally provide good results, frequencies in our scanner range are quite fussy where antennas are concerned. In fact, a particular lenght antenna perfect for one band will actually attenuate or trap a frequency in another band! Rubber ducky antennas are equally bad on all bands! They are less than unity gain and unless you are monitoring 400Mhz or above, they are all less than 1/2 wavelenght. Moreover, the lack of altitude contributes to poor reception with these antennas. The handheld scanners work better these days with the shorter uhf antennas because of the porcupine effect...that is, repeater towers popping up every 10 miles or so it looks like the hind parts of a porcupine!

 

[kb2vxa]

Hi Malarkey and all,

Right and wrong there guy. One part is this little trick won't work on VHF and UHF because it detunes the antenna and a random wire does not an antenna make. The other is it can work wonders on medium wave and shortwave by capacitively coupling signal from the wire to a rod antenna. On medium wave such as AM broadcast, inductive coupling is used by wrapping a few turns around the ferrite loopstick taking care not to wrap over an existing coil and grounding the wire to the chassis. If front end overload occurs just remove a few turns. BTW, I started using that trick for AM band DXing before the ferrite core was invented, it ain't so easy coupling to the flat loop on the back of an "All American Five" table radio and sticking the mess up with tape. Oh not duct tape, that wasn't invented yet either. (;->)

Oh, tracked ya down flyboy, nice set of wings ya got there!

 

[xpawel15x]

I stuck a long wire into the antenna jack. I was amazed that it worked. To me, it seems like reception was the same as the original antenna. But I'm not done yet, i will experiment some more.

 

[N1508J]

Think we're on the same page Warren. Xpawel15x seemed to be talking about his hand held antenna and wrapping a "long wire" around it. How long is a long wire for his handheld rig? His last post indicates that the "long wire" improved his reception as I suggested by installing it in the center conductor of the antenna jack. Great! Goes to show that rubber ducky antennas are krap (sic) and are only good when compared to no antenna at all! I don't know if he is monitoring 800 megs or not. But I would suspect that a "long wire" won't cut it and the rubber ducky might not be as krappy at that frequency...provided the antenna can "see" some 800 somewhere!!!

Uh Warren, better check the FAA registry...har de har har!

 

[radiogeek94]

how

i just want to listen to roads north on the trunck system insted of every thing else on ocean county trunk how to i lock out all the other talk groups exept for roads north?







PLESE HELP ME

 

[lil_jimmy_norton]

i just want to listen to roads north on the trunck system insted of every thing else on ocean county trunk how to i lock out all the other talk groups exept for roads north?







PLESE HELP ME

I think you will get better results if you start your own thread in the appropriate section, instead of posting in an unrelated thread.

Also listing you location and type of scanner will help.