Hey steve keep in mind that your older scanner can still be used for plenty of great listening! Railroad,aircraft,ham,business to name a few even if it's a older unit. Enjoy your pro-106
73,
n9zas
I agree and had decided to keep the 92 and 97 for just that reason, thanks.
Congrats on the new toy.
The GRE-built scanners have a rather sensitive front-end. The Yagi-uda, especially when put through an amp, might provide too much signal. (Unless you live a distance from the transmitting site.)
Right, I had read on RR about that with the GRE units and I'm glad you brought that up as I was a little concerned about that.The amp, (which is a SVI Digital "Subscriber Amplifier" 53 to 1000mhz cable amp) is mounted at the bottom of the mast and then only about a 45 foot RG6 coax run to my home office on the lower level. I either have a problem with my yagi or coax as the 106 barely receives anything without the amp in line. I did have a Motorola 850mhz "pigtail" mobile antenna mounted to my metal chimney cap and this worked just fine with the Ocala PD and Fire before they switched to P25. I tried this with the 106 to start with and it didn't work too well at all so that's when I got the yagi out and mounted it higher then added the amp.
On the yagi, I have an RG6 and female F connector pigtail. I don't know if I should have used a 300ohm to 75ohm balun on the output of the yagi. I'm positive they're no shorts btwn the driven elements and/or the metal boom. I'm going to put new, higher quality F connectors on the coax and check it all out real well and see what happens. I'm not exactly sure where the towers are but I am pretty sure I'm quite a distance from them. Now the 106 works really quite good when I go upstairs and I also got one of the 800mhz rubber duckies from RS and I will say that that antenna really makes a difference, much more than I expected. I have about 5 BNC rubber antennas from various scanners over the years and this new 800 one works much better than all of them, especially the stock 106 rubber duck. The lower level is brick exterior with a type of aluminum house wrap behind the brick so it's kinda like a Faraday Cage I think.
Most people think that Florida is all flat, at least I certainly used to before I moved here but I'll tell you, Ocala has some decent size long rolling hills and they're at least two btwn me and the main town area so I'm not sure at this point if I can get any sort of "line of sight" to the towers.
So I'll check out the coax and antennas and see if I can get by without the amp, and see if I can find where the towers are exactly. I aimed the yagi by watching the signal level while on the Ocala PD control channel. Any suggestions and/or advice is always welcome.
Thx,
Steve