Best Coax for scanner antenna?

[Avix]

Gol Darn it! I'm learning things again. Towards the back it is. I wonder how high a pole I can paint forest green to blend in with the trees. I have thought about putting it up on top of my flag pole, but the house ground is on the other side and other end. That idea is done. Does a metal plate for ground plane have any positive effect if the antenna is say 20' up?

Avix

 

[mmckenna]

Gol Darn it! I'm learning things again. Towards the back it is. I wonder how high a pole I can paint forest green to blend in with the trees. I have thought about putting it up on top of my flag pole, but the house ground is on the other side and other end. That idea is done. Does a metal plate for ground plane have any positive effect if the antenna is say 20' up?

Avix

A ground plane will not replace a lightning ground. Even with a ground plane, you still need to properly ground the mast/coax where it enters the home.

Depending on the type of antenna you are going to use, you may need to add a ground plane directly under the antenna, or it may not require one (as in most base antennas).

 

[Avix]

Oh, I know a ground plane won't deal with that. I'm just trying to figure out the optimal location and type of antenna I can squeeze out of the budget. The berm at the back is between us and downtown, and I suspect the new dispatch center is in line of one of the surrounding berms. Things will work themselves out. I picked up a 50' to replace the rubber duck, and it has made a pretty good improvement of calls quality.

Avix

 

[KC3ECJ]

Quad shield will have zero benefit if used in a scanner antenna. It’s intended for tight bundles of cable in the 950-2050MHz range in satellite installs where you can get some crosstalk. It doesn’t have any less loss or other useful parameters for scanner use compared to single shield.

I scan in that frequency range.

 

[prcguy]

I scan in that frequency range.

If you don’t have lots of coax tightly bundled together with different signals on them that can leak between cables above a GHz, you don’t need quad shield. The extra shielding does nothing else for reception.

 

[FCVPI99]

if you really have your pic of coax go the best of the best LMR600 or 900 ....

 

[Avix]

if you really have your pic of coax go the best of the best LMR600 or 900 ....

Most of what he had was the RG6 (?). It's been pushed back a bit. I had to put in 2 Pan and Tilt security cameras to cover my wife in her gardens in case she falls again. So that's where we're at. This 50 inch collapsing antenna has brought in a lot more signals more quickly.

Avix/

 

[FCVPI99]

RG6 is good .... hell we used RG8 and it was fine back when

 

[scottyhetzel]

Yup.

I'd put it near the meter/ground. That'll make life easier.

Be extremely careful driving a 8 foot ground rod... if the house has underground feeds instead of arial.. you can be in a world of hurt driving a rod into a schedule 40 conduit. Or you could hit another type utility line. NEC allows CATV and Telco to use the common house ground. McKenna I am a licensed electrician... maybe your local jurisdiction requires a new rod. Most electricians don't even have a impedance meter to read correct grounds. Bad grounds can cause all sorts of problems.

 

[mmckenna]

Be extremely careful driving a 8 foot ground rod... if the house has underground feeds instead of arial.. you can be in a world of hurt driving a rod into a schedule 40 conduit. Or you could hit another type utility line. NEC allows CATV and Telco to use the common house ground. McKenna I am a licensed electrician... maybe your local jurisdiction requires a new rod. Most electricians don't even have a impedance meter to read correct grounds. Bad grounds can cause all sorts of problems.

You are correct.

However, I wasn't telling him to drive a new ground rod. I was telling him that putting the antenna closer to the existing ground rod would be easier since he could simply connect to the existing.

Sorry I didn't make that clear.