Cheaper alternative to the st-2 antenna ?

[easybullet3]

I'm new to RTL-SDR and I live about 11miles (16km) from Heathrow Airport in London.
My apartment is on the 3rd floor of a building, and I am facing in the direction of the airport.

Many people mention that its hard to hear the Control Tower (unless you actually go to Heathrow).

However, someone said that a ST-2 antenna is really good and may get luck to hear the Control Tower from my flat.

on ebay (UK), its around £200 !!
Does anyone know of any budget cheap antennas which perform well ?
even better,, can I do well with a make-shift length of copper wire plugged into the RTL-SDR ?

 

[vagrant]

The ST-2 antenna does work reasonably well, I have two. Still, it is rather large and not worth £200. You would be better served with an antenna that provides some gain around 118 MHz for the tower, or the usual aircraft 118-137 MHz range if you want to try and hear more airport traffic. Thus, look for an aircraft band antenna specifically tuned for that 118-137 MHz range. ( If you want to monitor other stuff as well, then a discone will work, but it will not have the RF gain a purpose built aircraft band antenna will. )

Additionally, FM broadcast radio can be very unfriendly when trying to monitor airport communications due to the tremendous amounts of power they use. You may want to source and place a filter inline on your coax that will reduce the FM broadcast stations, yet allow the tower communication to get through. Perhaps give the following thread a read through to see what filter would best suit your needs.

FM bandstop filter comparison

I rolled some numbers on the RTL-SDR FM bandstop filter and the HPN-30118 AM/FM filter using a VNA. The results are interesting compared to the ZBSF-95+, especially when you hit VHF Air voice at 118 - 137 MHz. The ZBSF-95+ numbers come from their spec PDF as I do not own that yet. There are...

forums.radioreference.com

 

[popnokick]

Put one of these in a window facing the airport for the purpose of running a test to see if you have ANY signal at all from the tower, even if weak. It's a low-cost way to determine whether a more expensive antenna... such as a directional yagi or airband-specific antenna will improve the signal -
Homebrewed Off-Center Fed Dipole - The RadioReference Wiki (Scroll down the page to the wire version)

 

[ind224]

What is your distance to the airport? High quality coax like LMR400 can make a difference as well. A home made 3 element cut for 127.0 would get you the gain and still covers the whole band. Looks like you have more than one ATIS freq you can test with and EGLL is less than 100 feet above sea level. I'm at about 800 feet above as is my controlled airport and I can get ground and tower 11 miles out.

 

[dave3825]

someone said that a ST-2 antenna is really good

on ebay (UK), its around £200 !!

The ST-2 antenna does work reasonably well, I have two. Still, it is rather large and not worth £200.

If your talking about the Antennacraft ST 2 antenna, that was a great antenna and with it being discontinued, it is definitely worth whatever one is willing to pay.





If your talking about the MAGNUM DYNALAB - ST-2 Antenna, like this one for £200 in the UK, that antenna is for FM radio (home stereo). Not sure how well it would work for airband. There does not seem to be any specs on it either.

ST2 - Omnidirectional FM Antenna | FM Antenna for FM Tuners

ST2 FM Antenna. A more powerful FM Antenna than any single element dipole antenna, the ST-2 vertical antenna is probably one of the best things ever to happen to FM listeners in urban and fringe reception areas alike.

www.magnumdynalab.com