Apt high gain antenna

Status
Not open for further replies.

mnursy1

Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
6
Location
colusa ,ca
What is the best small hiking antenna for an apartment I do have an outside patio but I prefer to keep it under 36"
 

popnokick

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Mar 21, 2004
Messages
2,837
Location
Northeast PA
Highgain hiker - What floor is your apartment on? The higher the better, and if you're higher up you can get by with a smaller antenna. And assuming your outside patio has the full depth of the building behind it (toward the indoors... they usually do) then you will benefit most from a DIRECTIONAL antenna. You're going to see suggestions here to use a mobile magnetic mount antenna on the railing or air conditioner. Or various hanging / telescoping antennas placed on the patio. Those are all omnidirectional antennas, and at least one half of the radio coverage pattern is going to be severely attenuated / blocked by the rest of your apartment building. So what you want is a directional antenna on your patio that faces out AWAY from the building and maximizes the signals from that direction. Not TOO directional, and with a wide enough horizontal beam width to cover what you can see from your patio along the skyline. Believe it or not, TV antennas work very well for this. They cover the typical scanner frequency ranges which are on the edges of the TV broadcast bands... and most of them are fairly broadbanded. The flat panel or "leaf" type TV antennas do pretty well and are easily set up... and hidden if need be. Lots has been written here on RR regarding using TV antennas for scanners... do some searching. A cheap TV antenna is available from Walmart and nearly every home hardware store near you. Typically less than $25..... some have built-in amplifiers... careful with those. You'll need an adapter to go from the F-connector on the TV antenna cable to your scanner.

BUT... you did write "best small [high gain]" antenna. So if you tell us that all you listen to is the public safety 800 mHz trunked system in your area.... then spend a lot more money and get an 800 mHz beam "Yagi" type antenna and put it on a tripod on the patio. Point it away from the building and start listening....
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top