Best Wide-Band Scanner Antenna...the seventeen foot tall X700HNA or D3000N Discone?

[prcguy]

A typical scanner Discone like the Diamond 3000 is excellent for VHF through UHF, but starting somewhere in the 400-500Mhz range the pattern starts to raise above the horizon and at 700/800 it points high enough above the horizon where reception suffers. My recommendation is to stay with the Diamond 3000 and don't install its top whip. Then get a second antenna that covers 700/800MHz and use a diplexer to combine them onto one feedline. If stuff above 800Mhz interests you there are small Discones that cover about 300-400MHz to well over 2GHz that will supplement the Diamond 3000.

Ok and any suggestions?
Would the OmniX be better?

I already have LDF4_50A feedline, about an 90-100 ft run.
I also have an 800Mhz Yagi but it is a stationary mount, I thought about mounting it onto my mast with my TV rotator.

 

[n2pqq]

You can mount it either way.
I in fact have it mounted vertical.
I have used a Omni x , d130, scanner beam
And others . This is the best I have ever used.
Pricey yes however I look back and think
Of all the money I wasted on the other antennas.

 

[allend]

You can mount it either way.
I in fact have it mounted vertical.
I have used a Omni x , d130, scanner beam
And others . This is the best I have ever used.
Pricey yes however I look back and think
Of all the money I wasted on the other antennas.

Yes but the D130 will do VHF low band. Will this antenna mounted vertical pull in VHF low band if needed?

 

[devicelab]

Guys either Diamond Discone works fine for 700/800 as long as you use quality coax. A fairly inexpensive bandpass filter will greatly enhance the 700/800 if that's what you need. At ~30ft above ground my D3000N pulls in just about everything. It's also a decent Tx antenna as well.

 

[prcguy]

The D-130 does low band to the extent a sharply tuned whip at 50Mhz will work over 30-50Mhz, which is pretty bad.

Yes but the D130 will do VHF low band. Will this antenna mounted vertical pull in VHF low band if needed?

 

[prcguy]

Either Diamond Discone will be lousy at 700/800. I took some signal levels at 800/900MHz from a Discone similar to a D-130 then swapped a Maxrad 300MHz to 2.4GHz Discone in the same place and signal levels came up right around 10dB. That's a lot considering the smaller Discone has no gain.

Edit: The large Discone I tested was an MP Antenna Super M Ultra, rated 25MHz to 6GHz on receive, and 108MHz to 6GHz transmit. Besides knowing how bad a typical scanner Discone can be at 800MHz, a lesson learned here is not to trust specs from some companies, especially MP Antenna.

Guys either Diamond Discone works fine for 700/800 as long as you use quality coax. A fairly inexpensive bandpass filter will greatly enhance the 700/800 if that's what you need. At ~30ft above ground my D3000N pulls in just about everything. It's also a decent Tx antenna as well.

 

[Gadgetmann]

So instead of either Diamond discone you suggest a small discone? Like?
Oh and I am up about 60ft AGL on my tower.
I currently am running a Radio Shack discone that is probably 15-20 years old. I can still pickup the ATIS at Lansing's airport which is about 20+ miles as the crow flies.

 

[iMONITOR]

This thread is bouncing around like a ping pong ball! To the OP, what problems were you having and what were you trying to accomplish?

 

[TailGator911]

I am very happy with my Diamond discone, but when battling local Ohio MARCS lsm issues (pre-SDS) I installed a Cushcraft directional yagi and aimed it directly at my local tower site with much better results. While lsm was still an issue (especially during busy times) it was not as much an issue as before. The discone was too wide and inaccurate to properly isolate my signal, and something close by would cause intermod every now and then. Not so with the yagi. I fed the input into a 4-port Stridsberg coupler to TRX-1, BCD536HP, and WS-1065 and intermod was gone and except for garbled transmissions every now and then the yagi worked well and still does. The TRX-1 fared better than the other two with minimal lsm hiccups. Now I use the yagi exclusively for the Ohio MARCS system with 4 different scanners, and the discone for all other bands with 4 other scanners and two feed lines to handhelds. My personal advice, use something other than a discone for 800mhz systems.

JD
kf4anc

 

[Ubbe]

Well whomever is recommended a 17ft VHF/UHF dual-band antenna as an "all-band scanner" antenna doesn't have the slightest clue. I own the Diamond X510HDN and a D3000N and the D3000N kicks the X510's butt most of the time......Plus I live in a ****ty high-RF area so it's easily overloaded. The X510 requires a paging filter but otherwise it's a solid performer.

It's not the antenna that needs filters, it's your receiver. It is obvious that your receiver are being overloaded by strong RF signals and a less efficient antenna works best for you as a weaker signal level doesn't de-sense your receiver.

I did a comparison between a 1/4 GP antenna for 122MHz and a Diamond X510 dual band 145MHz-435MHz antenna and listened to the ATIS transmission at 122MHz from an airport that has a fairly weak signal at my place. The X510 had a much better signal than the 1/4 wave antenna. And a 1/4 wave are mostly better in performance at it's tuned frequency than a discone antenna. I think most people are oblivious to the fact that strong RF signals will make a mediocre receiver loose it's sensitivity and then they state that a good antenna with gain are not working and a lesser gain antenna works better, when it is their receiver that can't handle the increased signal level.

The radiation pattern is designed for transmitting and is thus much more efficient. On receive, the discone is amazing but I find I need more filters to narrow its effectiveness at times.

Does it have different radiation patterns on transmit compared to receive?

/Ubbe

 

[prcguy]

It cannot be different between transmit and receive.

Does it have different radiation patterns on transmit compared to receive?

/Ubbe

 

[KMG54]

Buy this, mount vertical, no drilling required and listen away. Despite being VHF high works really well on 800 also. A bit directional, but the backside picks up fine. And for 30 bucks, can't go wrong. https://www.newark.com/stellar-labs/30-2475/fringe-directional-antenna-vhf/dp/48Y8141

 

[prcguy]

That antenna doesn't cover any public service frequencies, especially 700/800 which is most recently being discussed. Its a TV antenna, and only a narrow band TV antenna. The fact you are picking up things out of its range is irrelevant unless you can supply some data to support it. A metal coat hanger on the end of some coax will receive stuff but I would never recommend it as a scanner antenna.

Buy this, mount vertical, no drilling required and listen away. Despite being VHF high works really well on 800 also. A bit directional, but the backside picks up fine. And for 30 bucks, can't go wrong. https://www.newark.com/stellar-labs/30-2475/fringe-directional-antenna-vhf/dp/48Y8141

 

[KMG54]

I get 700 and 800 fine off it for 50 miles out.
Recieve only, I know you are a smart man, but best antenna I have owned. Are the directors too big yes, do they still pick up 700 and 800 yes!

 

[KMG54]

Being a yagi, multi cast is redudced using this and signal is great. Longer elements pick up longer wavelenths, but also pick up shorter ones.
I agree it is not tuned to that range, but it just works.

 

[allend]

Antenna's are kind of fickle. It's a guessing game sometimes. Some antenna's work better than others. I have spent lots of money on antenna's that get great reviews and are expensive and then they turn out to be duds. The discone antennas tend to work great. The AntennaCraft ST-2 I felt was the best out there at the time. Sometimes its a guessing game and spending money until you find what works best for you.

Height is always your best friend as much as possible. Get that metal as high up as possible

 

[Ubbe]

I recommend to always use a variable 0-20dB attenuator and also try a FM broadcast filter and a LTE filter, even though that attenuates frequencies over 800MHz it's a mass produced $10 filter that can be tested to see what happens at 700MHz and in the 400MHz-500MHz range. Listen to a weak station in analog mode and hear how much background noise there is and see if any attenuation or filters can improve the signal in different frequency bands.

/Ubbe