General Questions Related To Scanning

[AngWay]

Hi i have just some basic questions i would like to ask to clear up some issues i have.
#1 Can i use a pigtail splitter to power a LNA with bias tee or do i have to use a cat tv splitter?.
#2 Would i loose more db with a regular splitter than with a pigtail splitter?
#3 What brand of splitter would you recommend?
#4 Is OP25 the best option for a pi 4?.
#5 What makes a scanner like a sds200 different from a couple of SDR dongles, with the sds200 i can only listen to one thing at a time correct? and with a sdr dongle i can hear just one thing at a time so just based on that there wouldn't be no need to invest in a sds200 would their?
#6 What is the difference between this Link and a regular cat tv splitter?.
#7 What do you think about using 100 feet of KMR240 coax cable for a scanner?
#8 On tv splitters like a 3 way splitter i see 2 ports say -7db and one port says -3.5 db why is that?
#9 Does a J pole antenna need to be grounded?
#10 And finally a question about this Link between that and a regular LNA what would be the difference, would that item be a good thing or a bad thing?

Please i am very new to all of this so if my questions seem a little dumb thats why, regardless thank you for responding.

 

[RMason]

#8 On tv splitters like a 3 way splitter i see 2 ports say -7db and one port says -3.5 db why is that?

A good explanation is provided at:

https://support.channelmaster.com/hc/en-us/articles/200383715-How-Much-Signal-do-I-Lose-Using-a-Splitter-CM-3212HD-CM-3213HD#:~:text=A%20splitter%20will%20have%20approximately%203.5%20dB%20of%20loss%20on%20each%20port.

"TV signal splitters with more than two output ports are normally made up of multiple two-way splitters. For instance, a three-way splitter will have an additional two-way splitter on one of the output ports of the first splitter, and it will look like Figure 2--100% of the power is split in two, providing 50% of the power to each output port. The second splitter then divides it again so that now 25% of the power is on the two ports from the second splitter. In terms of dB loss, the second splitter adds another 3.5 dB of signal loss, so the two ports off the second splitter will have 7 dB of loss, while the port off the original splitter will still have 3.5 dB of loss."​