IrvingtonVFD43
Member
Ideally, I'd rather have an antenna on the roof, but going to keep my Wife happy! Here is a small antenna improvement project I have been working on.
As I was looking to improve VHF Hi signal strength on a Larsen LMO 220 (yes its made for the 220 ham band), I did a bit of tinkering around with a metal cat litter pan (never used!)a couple of elements off an ancient Radio Shack 20-032 and a piece of strong-tie.
The Larsen actually did a decent job by itself down to the aircraft band up towards the 70cm ham band, but dropped of quite a bit towards UHF. But there is very little in the way of UHF minus businesses at my location that are over on DMR or Mototrbo. The only 800mhz I have is local law enforcement, not a factor since the site is in town.
The cat pan acts as a ground plane for the antenna. I then attached the strong-tie to the cat pan with a couple of 1/4 machine screws, attached the Larsen antenna to the tie, which the bottom of the antenna is a trunk lip mount, perfect for attaching to the tie, I was going to swap out the coax from the antenna to some RG8X, but left it alone.
The 2 elements were parted out from a Radio Shack 20-032 mobile antenna using the top and middle elements. 2 holes were drilled into the pan, inserted and glued in. The elements are not physically attached to the coax but act as a "radiator" to increase the gain a bit.
So far, I am surprised with the improved performance. I have 5 Nebraska SRS towers near me. 1 is local, I can hear it with a paperclip stuck into the antenna jack of my Pro106. The other towers are Humphrey, 20 miles south and Elgin 25 miles west. With both of these towers, I now have the control channels coming in at 99% decode, 4-5 bars on the signal strength meter, prior they were hovering around 70-80% 3-4 bars with occasional pixelating on received transmissions. Rattlesnake Creek, about 30 miles east, the control channel is readable but not strong enough to decode. I even picked up a couple more bars on my local 800 tower!
I did give this antenna a name-Imperial Probe Droid antenna, as it sorta look like the top on the droid in the Empire Strikes Back.
![IMG_20230518_163254367[3842].jpg](http://forums.radioreference.com/data/attachments/117/117511-2954950810d735afc95732446a2c188d.jpg "IMG_20230518_163254367[3842].jpg")
As I was looking to improve VHF Hi signal strength on a Larsen LMO 220 (yes its made for the 220 ham band), I did a bit of tinkering around with a metal cat litter pan (never used!)a couple of elements off an ancient Radio Shack 20-032 and a piece of strong-tie.
The Larsen actually did a decent job by itself down to the aircraft band up towards the 70cm ham band, but dropped of quite a bit towards UHF. But there is very little in the way of UHF minus businesses at my location that are over on DMR or Mototrbo. The only 800mhz I have is local law enforcement, not a factor since the site is in town.
The cat pan acts as a ground plane for the antenna. I then attached the strong-tie to the cat pan with a couple of 1/4 machine screws, attached the Larsen antenna to the tie, which the bottom of the antenna is a trunk lip mount, perfect for attaching to the tie, I was going to swap out the coax from the antenna to some RG8X, but left it alone.
The 2 elements were parted out from a Radio Shack 20-032 mobile antenna using the top and middle elements. 2 holes were drilled into the pan, inserted and glued in. The elements are not physically attached to the coax but act as a "radiator" to increase the gain a bit.
So far, I am surprised with the improved performance. I have 5 Nebraska SRS towers near me. 1 is local, I can hear it with a paperclip stuck into the antenna jack of my Pro106. The other towers are Humphrey, 20 miles south and Elgin 25 miles west. With both of these towers, I now have the control channels coming in at 99% decode, 4-5 bars on the signal strength meter, prior they were hovering around 70-80% 3-4 bars with occasional pixelating on received transmissions. Rattlesnake Creek, about 30 miles east, the control channel is readable but not strong enough to decode. I even picked up a couple more bars on my local 800 tower!
I did give this antenna a name-Imperial Probe Droid antenna, as it sorta look like the top on the droid in the Empire Strikes Back.
