Looking to build a few antennas

[eagle90301]

I’m looking to build a few antennas for my scanners. I want to build one for at home in my office and another for when I’m traveling. I’m also looking to build a HAM antenna for traveling for my handheld radio. ( all antennas are for when I’m stopped not while driving) does anyone have plans to build any antennas.

 

[KB4MSZ]

Due to the diversity of prospective antenna designs and the wide spectrum of frequencies you described above, we would need more information about what type of installation you can accommodate in a base station environment. Also, I assume that you are not transmitting with these antennas and therefore do not have the instruments needed to properly tune antennas for a given band. You don't mention whether or not you are a licensed Ham. Some questions that need to be addressed:

At home, can you install an outdoor scanner antenna or do restrictions require you to "hide" it in some way?

Scanners cover quite a wide range of VHF/UHF frequencies. While building your own is an enjoyable project (it's what I enjoy most about the radio hobby) at these frequencies there are many factory built antennas which are quite reasonable in price and work well. It is likely that you would need a multi-band design of some type to offer the broad coverage that a scanner requires.

"Feeding" these antennas (routing of the coaxial cable) might also have a large influence on your installation.

Is this handheld radio just a receiver? Is it general coverage (capable of frequencies below 30 MHz) or just VHF/UHF? If it is general coverage, does it have SSB mode? Without SSB you won't hear much amateur radio activity.

For your mobile antennas in the VHF range and above it makes a lot more sense to use a manufactured antenna in my opinion. For HF frequencies (below 30 MHz) then something like a dipole design would allow quick deployment and tear-down while on the road.

Antennas are 100% frequency dependent, one size/design doesn't fit all.

 

[WB9YBM]

I’m looking to build a few antennas for my scanners. I want to build one for at home in my office and another for when I’m traveling. I’m also looking to build a HAM antenna for traveling for my handheld radio. ( all antennas are for when I’m stopped not while driving) does anyone have plans to build any antennas.

There are a few sources of information that I can recommend:

• The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) (web site or direct);
• CQ: Amateur Radio magazine web site (they also sell books) (web site or direct);
• The usual Internet sites like Amazon, Wikipedia, or Google searches for home-made antenna information/how-to.

 

[fourwd1]

There's tons of DIY antenna info if you look. Just search on parameters like frequency, use, mounting, etc.
For example " 2 meter mobile ", or "10 meter base directional " or " 50 MHz omnidirectional base " etc.

 

[Ubbe]

I agree about buying a factory antenna, at least to use as a reference and then build your own antenna that you think would work equally good or better for your frequencies and then sell the factory antenna if you where successful. You will probably want the most effecient antenna but a factory have more resources to do that so you will probably keep the factory antenna.

/Ubbe