Looking for flat mobile scanner antenna

[Dromanchyk]

Moat of the monitoring I do is in the 800 Mhz public safety band. I have a nice mobile scanning antenna mounted on my roof rack, but frankly I'm tired of having to fold it down every time I enter a parking garage. I'm looking to replace it with one of the flat circular antennas, similar to what I see being used on the local police units and fire departments. Does anyone have any suggestions that may fit the bill ? I would prefer it to be a magnetic mount. - - Thanks

 

[601]

Try one of the Laird phantom antennas. I used one on UHF for scanning and had excellent reception. Worked somewhat okay for VHF. I'm pretty sure on 800 it would work just as well.

 

[ab5r]

This may help you decide:
http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data Sheets/Laird Technologies/Vehicular_Antenna_Catalog.pdf

 

[JD21960]

flat scanner antenna

I have one .. it's an 3ft long, RCA metal TV antenna....lying FLAT in the trunk of my car. Works fine for 800mhz and our trunked system, ha.

 

[mmckenna]

NMO mount:
https://www.tessco.com/products/displayProductInfo.do?sku=55097&eventPage=1
https://www.tessco.com/products/displayProductInfo.do?sku=87154&eventPage=1
https://www.tessco.com/products/displayProductInfo.do?sku=19283&eventPage=2

Or, if you just want to make a hole and use this:
https://www.tessco.com/products/displayProductInfo.do?sku=434945&eventPage=1

NOT ideal performers, as there isn't a lot of vertical radiator to catch RF. Notice the gain figures are shown as dB-MEG or dBi. Note that this is different than dBd.

They'll work, just don't expect the performance of a vertical whip.
Speaking of whips, an NMO mount 800MHz whip is less than 3 inches tall and will work as well as those above, if not a bit better and cost you about $10. 3 inches shouldn't be an issue with a parking garage.
I'm running 800MHz 1/4 wave whips on all our vehicles at work and they are working well. Low profile, good performance and less expensive.

 

[a417]

I'm unaware of any of the pucks being magnet-mount.

 

[W8RMH]

Laird Technologies DISC806M

 

[kc2kth]

You may want to keep an eye on eBay. Back in the early 90s Radio Shack had a flat cellular antenna that was a squarish block with a good magnet. I used one on my father's van when putting a phone in his truck at the time.

 

[kc2kth]

Found it, Radome cellular antenna. 1993 Radio Shack catalog, page 17.

RadioShackCatalogs.com (View catalogs in HTML format)