I live in an apartment in NYC and with my current antenna I can't really pick up anything from the neighboring airports. I've been looking at DPD Production's VHF Air Blade Indoor Antenna, but I wanted to post this before I spent that money. Does anyone have any other suggestions or their own testimonials to this antenna? Thanks.
DPD Productions VHF Air Blade Indoor Antenna?
- Thread starter peeeeeta
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Suggest you tell us what you are using now. However, if you are trying to hear the ground end at the airports, these are relatively low power (they do not need high power to reach line of sight aircraft). Thus the distance across ground and through an apartment wall will not be very good regardless of what you do and my guess is that you will be disappointed with the purchase.
Right now I have the rtl-sdr kit antenna. I'm not trying to hear the ground communications, just tower, approach, and center.
Ok I might try that, thanks. I can't imagine it would be better than the kit antenna though.
Here's an RR post with someone who has an antenna from the same manufacturer, but not your same unit.
That website has a fair amount of marketing wank to it, designed to separate people from their money. For a hundred bucks, I wouldn't touch it. 18 feet of RG8X? 2.6 dBi gain on an omnidirectional antenna? SWR reading on a device that is recieve only?
Huh? Copper. More better.marketing said:
19 mHz bandwidth is anything but narrow.marketing also said:
wire soldered to metal, w00t.
bet you it's not Times or Belden, so off brand it is...
From my very narrow opinion, this is about 3 times what this antenna should cost you. It's a good amount of money for what can be duplicated with a well tuned piece of copper wire. I'm not telling you that you shouldn't buy it, but I wouldn't. Someone in marketing wrote that page up to sell it, because word salad sometimes works.
I wouldn't expect much improvement over the telescoping magmount. Being indoors and, I'm guessing, surrounded by other tall buildings, is the major obstacle. All the ground-level stuff designed to talk to airplanes at low altitude (tower, etc.) is pretty hard to hear away from the airport.
Put your telescoping magmount on metal, preferably extending a couple feet in each direction (file cabinet, etc.) and near a window facing the airport and extend the whip to about 23". Move it around to find the best exact location.
Put your telescoping magmount on metal, preferably extending a couple feet in each direction (file cabinet, etc.) and near a window facing the airport and extend the whip to about 23". Move it around to find the best exact location.
Thank you for that. I'll definitely try a copper wire before I make any decisions.
Honestly? I'd try a good ol magmount on a groundplane, that kit you listed earlier doesn't have any magical pieces in it (or a mag mount /base that allows a good groundplane) , it appears to try to do a bit of everything, but nothing jumps out.
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By ground communications I meant ground control, tower, approach/departure, center, etc. - the ground end of all. So I still think you will be disappointed.
Oh okay, thanks.
I have one of these in my attic but you can also hang one in the highest window in your location, preferably facing the airport tower you're most interested in. Costs about $15 and 15 min of your time to make. I use mine for both civilian and milair reception... works great and both of those bands are well within its design range. Scroll down the RR Wiki page to the wire variation of the antenna for the one you can put together in 15 minutes. At the price and time involved for setup you almost cannot afford not to try it.... especially with RTL-SDR (which is one of the receivers I use with my setup) -
Homebrewed Off-Center Fed Dipole - The RadioReference Wiki
Homebrewed Off-Center Fed Dipole - The RadioReference Wiki
I had the DPD indoor antenna and it failed to impress, lot of marketing hype. I have switched to a Taco D-5076 which is awesome. Also tried the Sirio Yagi which is good.
The DPD Air Blade is the perfect antenna for the avid Civ/Mil Air enthusiast who lives in a HOA and married a spouse who hates the hobby.
3.5ft of wire would be around a half wavelength on VHF air and really high impedance around 3,000 ohms. That by itself will not match to coax and will not make a working antenna. A 1/4 wave ground plane would be a better choice using about 22 inches for the vertical element and 25 inches for the ground radials.
Yes, it is a terrible match for coax - however...i randomly grabbed a 3.5' piece of 18g solid copper groundwire and hung it from a nail in my workshop, many moons ago and it worked better than the rtl-sdr included antenna. I'm pretty sure it's still handing there with jumper leads onto another radio...
Edelweiss
Author of: Scanning the UK Airbands with the Beast
Antennas belong outside. Doesn't matter much what you use indoors it will always be lacking. Just the difference of an antenna under the roof and then on a pole on top of the roof is like day an night. So if you are really stuck indoors try perhaps a window quad type antenna, you may find some dimensioning online. Stick it onto the window with e.g. copper tape, you can get this on ebay. M
KB2GOM
Active Member
Double plus on this recommendation. At "Pop's" recommendation, I built the wire version, and it works well for me. It's inexpensive, easy to build, and below is my experience in building it:
"Well, with the help of a ham friend (thanks again, Steve!), I built the Homebrewed Off-Center Fed Dipole - The RadioReference Wiki (OCFD).
Wire: I used some white insulation multistrand I found in the workshop.
300-75 ohm transformer: Amazon, two for less than $8 (apparently, you can't buy just one).
Lugs: local hardware store insulated lugs.
The only glitch was that the lugs I bought would not fit over the insulated wire on the free ends of the dipole. Fortunately, Steve had some larger lugs, and with those in hand, assembly took only five minutes. So, note well: if you plan to build the wire version of this antenna, make sure that you have some lugs that are big enough to fit over the insulated wire.
I hung the completed off-center-fed dipole vertically inside in my radio room (discretely, along the edge of a window frame) and hooked it up to the SDS200. I can't prove, based on the signal strength meter, that the OCFD outperforms the rabbit ears antenna (that I had built previously) when receiving ATIS from the Albany County Airport, but it is certainly no worse, and the OCFD clearly outperforms the metal telescopic antenna that comes with the SDS200.
And it seems like I am getting better audio from the local public safety channels I am monitoring for the Commuter Assistance Net. I really can't explain why that should be so.
Bottom line: the OCFD is definitely an experiment worth doing. It's inexpensive, easy to assemble (the wire version), and delivers worthy performance. I plan to keep mine hooked up to the SDS200. Thanks, popnokick, for recommending it."
If I were you, I would seriously consider building one of these and seeing how it works.
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