DIY high loss UHF antenna

[dkcorlfla]

Hi all, thought this might be interesting: Been getting blasted by a very strong digital station close by. When hooked up to my Diamond X30A antenna my Airspy SDR was getting swamped. I was having a lot of trouble finding the frequency because the waterfall was blown out so I decided to try and make a really bad antenna and put it close to the ground to try and attenuate the signal. Found a section of real crappy coax and solder on a dipole cut for UHF.

Worked great! Found the frequency, and decoded the digital with DSDplus. Was able to figure out what it was and program the scanner with the info DSDplus decoded. That was a lot of fun finding a unlisted DMR station and being able to program the scanner.

 

[prcguy]

Wow, congratulations! I can't say I've ever heard of someone purposely making a bad antenna. Typically you would just stick an attenuator in line with whatever antenna you already have.

 

[dkcorlfla]

Wow, congratulations! I can't say I've ever heard of someone purposely making a bad antenna. Typically you would just stick an attenuator in line with whatever antenna you already have.

I did place an order for some sma 30 db attenuators but I had the crappy coax and wanted to know what the strong signal was NOW!

On a side note the scanner is on a lower gain antenna (discone) but it's still good and the Airspy SDR could not handle the discone either but now that I have the scanner programed for the strong station and it's working great