Antenna signal amplifier?

[bockscar]

Greetings,

Just curious if such a beast is available (and actually works). My particular situation is that I have an antenna in the attic and run it into my house cable system. Although I listen to a lot of air traffic out of Philadelphia (about 20 miles north) I am not trying to capture any particular band or location. I simply want a good broad range, relatively cheap, distributed signal for hobby scanning in whatever room I am in.

Based on another thread I hear there is a lot of line loss in standard television cable so 800 mHz + may not be much better than my ducky antenna. Can the antenna signal be amp'd prior to the house cable connection? Or is this another case of matching the amp to your freq of interest to get genuine results?

Thanks for any insights.

 

[greenthumb]

The GRE Super Amplifier works quite well. Check one out at:

https://www.greamerica.com/shop/cgi...10&act=&aff=&pg=prod&ref=scan003&cat=&catstr=

...or search EBay for them.

Regular TV cable has an impedance of 75 ohms, and your scanner operates at an impedance of 50 ohms. This imepdance mismatch will cause a lot of signal degredation without an impedance matching network, and the amplifier will not help you out very much. Your best bet will be to purchase some RG-8 or LMR-400 coaxial cable (or your favorite low loss 50 ohm cable) and use that instead. You will see much better results.

 

[nighthawks]

Greetings,

Just curious if such a beast is available (and actually works). My particular situation is that I have an antenna in the attic and run it into my house cable system. Although I listen to a lot of air traffic out of Philadelphia (about 20 miles north) I am not trying to capture any particular band or location. I simply want a good broad range, relatively cheap, distributed signal for hobby scanning in whatever room I am in.

Based on another thread I hear there is a lot of line loss in standard television cable so 800 mHz + may not be much better than my ducky antenna. Can the antenna signal be amp'd prior to the house cable connection? Or is this another case of matching the amp to your freq of interest to get genuine results?

Thanks for any insights.

I had a person tell me about this amp. he says it works great. He set it up as 4 scanners to one antenna, you could hook it up as 1 antenna to 4 rooms
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?summary=summary&techSpecs=techSpecs&currentTab=summary&custRatings=custRatings&features=features&accessories=accessories&productId=2103093&support=support&tab=custRatings

I'm not running 800, I'm out in the sticks. They say the best cable run is LMR.
Check here and then go down and look under Coax Suppliers
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Scanner_Antennas

Hope this helps.

 

[radio10-8]

I have heard GRE works very well.

 

[zguy1243]

Buy this---Low noise figure, best you can get without going commercial or milspec. Blows the GRE away
http://cgi.ebay.com/NIB-Electroline...ryZ39803QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[bockscar]

Many thanks to everyone who shared their knowledge! I will take a look that the amps and equipment listed. I am using a low loss RG-8 cable for a drop lead. However I am stuck with the cable that the house is wired with for this project

 

[greenthumb]

Buy this---Low noise figure, best you can get without going commercial or milspec. Blows the GRE away
http://cgi.ebay.com/NIB-Electroline...ryZ39803QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Isn't that going to be a 75 ohm device?

 

[ka3jjz]

For receiving, the difference is hardly worth mentioning. Keep in mind that the actual impedance of a circuit - any circuit - can change with frequency. In this case, such changes are probably not going to have much of an effect. 73s Mike

 

[trooperdude]

I use both the Electroline amps and Rg6U quad shield for most of my current applications with great results.

On Rx, the 75ohms doesn't make any difference to the user that you can hear.