I am looking for an antenna for my hand held to be used at home. Maybe using a magnetic mount ontop of the fireplace and dropping a coax down to the living room. I saw this all band antenna from Antenna_2-Way_direct on eBay.
SCANNER ANTENNA BROAD BAND MINI MAGNET MOUNT BNC - eBay (item 250724005077 end time Dec-08-10 13:44:01 PST)
He tells me it is their own house brand. Has anyone here tired this antenna?
Thanks
It's a style that's become pretty common over the past 10 years, usually selling for anywhere from $13 - $20. I don't know what he means by claiming it's their own "house brand" but I assume he gets them from some wholesaler just like all the other places that sell very similar antennas do.
The only difference I've seen in them is the number & location of the pigtails. Some claim it improves performance on 800MHz, some say it allows you to transmit on some of the ham bands, etc.
For your application, I suggest you go a different route, getting a better antenna & then some better coax, like RG-8X or something.
I have 3 or 4 of those little rare-earth magnet antennas laying around in my garage. I usually keep one in the car so I could throw it on the roof & hook it up to one of my handheld scanners or a frequency counter & thus have an antenna outside the car, however when you figure in the line loss that you get from that RG-174 coax, often I wasn't any better off than if I'd just used a decent antenna on the handheld scanner or freq counter inside the car.
