Bad reception

[BartowCountyScanner]

I have been providing a feed for my county Fire, EMS and Sheriff along with 3 city police and a city fire. I am still fairly new to scanners and could use some guidance. County Sheriff is usually good, both dispatch and units can be heard. EMS, can only usually hear the dispatch. County Fire rarely hear anything and 60% of the time it gets stuck on that channel. City Fire works great along with that cities Police. City 2 can only hear dispatch and City 3(which is where I live) can only hear the unit. I should also mention all these come from the same dispatch office, just different channels.

I am using and old Radio Shack Pro 2011 and have tried using different types of indoor antennas and even tried making this
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...LUHz-rWMiw&t=1

I am not opposed to buying an external antenna but i have to be selective as my HOA forbids anything over a meter in diameter and can not be on any other structure than the back of the house/roof. I guess my question would be would a newer scanner do better or just need a better antenna and which ones would work best. Any help is appreciated

Also has anyone tried the SNOOP http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?VISuperSize&item=150557984765

Thanks

 

[MTS2000des]

The problem you are facing is some of your channels you scan are not repeater channels, and if the field units are too far from your location, you won't hear them. Adding an external antenna will help this, but not guaranteed- unless it's a high gain type and in you're in a good location. An external antenna will also eliminate interference from local sources such as wireless routers, cable modems, etc- just about everything in the average home today put out hash and trash especially in the VHF frequency range.