w1av
Member
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2006
- Messages
- 81
Finally, after over a year I replaced my original coax run and mast. Last January (2018) I bought a Diamond Discone antenna. It came with really thin cheap coax. I should have swapped that coax out to begin with. But, alas I used it anyway....local reception wasnt too bad. I also made a few vertical dipoles out of old aluminum stock. I had a bunch of 75 ohm TV coax so I used that for the dipoles. Dipoles were not up very high and received VERY well even tho coax was mismatched. But for receiving I doubt it mattered much on airband and vhf. One day I was messing around with my Radio Shack Pro 2055 trying to program some trunked Mass State Police freqs.....Those freqs are up in the 800 mhz range but I was hearing them on a VHF dipole! I live in Rhode Island with a sizeable hill to my east. I also noticed when I switch antennas to the discone I couldnt hear a thing on the trunked channels! I figured that cheap flimsy coax that came with the discone was garbage for sure. So I ordered a 50' length of LMR 400, the REAL stuff. And I also ordered 3 sections of 16 gauge mast at 5 feet long a piece. I replaced the crappy coax and the cheaper 18 gauge mast sections I bought at Lowe's. Got everything all put back together today and what a difference. I am hearing things that I previously couldnt hear. Even though the LMR is VERY stiff, it was still easily routed with gentle bends around corners. It seems very similar to the 9913 I used when I was into ham radio. I am still licensed but inactive. I had just enough of a cable run to go directly from antenna to radio with no slack! Perfect length. I may eventually put one of those vhf dipoles up again to use with an extra Uniden BC700a scanner in here. I was using that for monitoring ACARS. When I put the discone back up today I didnt bother to add the dipole to the mast. I gotta clean all the connections and then put it up. Anyway attached is a picture of antenna. I mounted it to back of garage. Unfortunately my ladder wasnt long enough to be able to mount brackets closer to the roof peak. And climbing on roof off limits. I was still able to get the new mast up a bit higher anyway. Going to store tomorrow to get grounding rod and wire.