Attic Antenna Recommendations for Train Telemetry and Defect Detectors

[prcguy]

I would recommend an 8ft tall marine antenna for the VHF side as these cover 160MHz and will have more gain than any mobile antenna on a ground plane or a 1/4 wave ground plane or anything else shorter than about 6ft. You can pick up used marine antennas cheap. For UHF maybe a Laird FG4505 covering 450-470MHz with about 6dBd gain and 76" height. I don't think you can do much better than this unless you have more than 8ft of vertical space. I would keep a pair of antennas like these a good 10ft or more from each other horizontally to keep interaction to a minimum.

 

[RugbyJunctionWI]

I would recommend an 8ft tall marine antenna for the VHF side as these cover 160MHz and will have more gain than any mobile antenna on a ground plane or a 1/4 wave ground plane or anything else shorter than about 6ft. You can pick up used marine antennas cheap. For UHF maybe a Laird FG4505 covering 450-470MHz with about 6dBd gain and 76" height. I don't think you can do much better than this unless you have more than 8ft of vertical space.

Funny you mention that... there is an 8' Shakespeare marine antenna right next to the two Centerfire antenna in my attic. It works well but at a much higher cost. Part of my antenna search is / was to find an affordable antenna that can fit anywhere so that others can duplicate my setup and hopefully contribute train telemetry data to a web app I've created for train tracking w/o breaking the bank... or poking holes in their roof to fit a super tall antenna

 

[prcguy]

Funny you mention that... there is an 8' Shakespeare marine antenna right next to the two Centerfire antenna in my attic. It works well but at a much higher cost. Part of my antenna search is / was to find an affordable antenna that can fit anywhere so that others can duplicate my setup and hopefully contribute train telemetry data to a web app I've created for train tracking w/o breaking the bank... or poking holes in their roof to fit a super tall antenna

Around here you can grab used marine antennas in the 6 to 8ft range for about $25, maybe $40 tops for a nice one. If you want great long range reception at VHF/UHF, the antenna and its location is everything. If you set a low antenna price limit for others to follow you will be limiting their reception range.

 

[RugbyJunctionWI]

Around here you can grab used marine antennas in the 6 to 8ft range for about $25, maybe $40 tops for a nice one. If you want great long range reception at VHF/UHF, the antenna and its location is everything. If you set a low antenna price limit for others to follow you will be limiting their reception range.

I'm not going to dictate anything, I just want to make sure I can at least provide a low cost antenna suggestion for those choosing to get onboard with providing telemetry data to my web app. Over the past few months, I've found that in order to receive the highest number of train telemetry signals for HOT, EOT, and DPU, one needs 2 antennas, 2 SDRs, and a reasonably new Windows PC with USB 3.0+ ports. For many, the cost of the hardware is typically a deterrent when it's several hundred dollars just to detect trains.

All-out range actually isn't the goal... not missing the existence of a train at a particular location is the coal for my use case. If one's home is more than a 1/2 mile from the tracks, then a longer antenna mounted high and outdoors might be necessary.