Maybe an amplifer?

[RClary11]

I am just attempting to improve my reception as much as possible given my situation, that is the ground floor apartment I live in is 3 feet under ground. I am getting a new mag mount mobile antenna to put in the window for better reception, but I have heard of scanner antenna amplifiers and i wonder if this would help me out at all?

 

[LesWurk]

I am just attempting to improve my reception as much as possible given my situation, that is the ground floor apartment I live in is 3 feet under ground. I am getting a new mag mount mobile antenna to put in the window for better reception, but I have heard of scanner antenna amplifiers and i wonder if this would help me out at all?

Say your trying to get out makes me think your transmitting? Recieve only? Pretty difficult if your feedline is very short to get a preamp to help your reception. Any clues to your location and equipment? Any frequency bands your interested in (ie: vhf, uhf, 800 mhz) ? Higher is better.

 

[RClary11]

Say your trying to get out makes me think your transmitting? Recieve only? Pretty difficult if your feedline is very short to get a preamp to help your reception. Any clues to your location and equipment? Any frequency bands your interested in (ie: vhf, uhf, 800 mhz) ? Higher is better.

Nope not transmitting, just receiving, I have a GRE PSR-500 handheld scanner, and being in an apartment, especially a ground floor apt, I am not sure that I can get an antenna up outside and get it high. Right now the antenna I have is in the window and the only way I can get any reception is to have it right up against the window. I am getting a newer antenna, since the one I have now is about 15 years old, and it has 12 feet of coax cable with a 31 inch whip. It will do better than the old, but I just thought getting an amp for it might better my chances. I live in Tillsonburg Ontario which is near London, well it's a 45 minute drive from London, and I mostly listen to VHF and UHF stuff. police/fire/ambulance/air, and some railroad stuff.

 

[gary123]

An amp will help but you are still in the same situation. An amp will only amplify what is there, unfortunatly you are in a situation where you have very little signal to work with. there are a lot of low profile antennas available that you might be able to use.

Ont such is just a peice of coax with the center conductor exposed (ask if you want the specifics). this type of antenna can easilly be run outside as it looks like regular TV coax and can even run alongside tv cable.

 

[RClary11]

Can you give me more information on the low profile type of antennas? Thanks.

 

[frankh]

An signal amp would be a horrible idea with a PSR-500 if you can mount your antenna as high as possible other than that you are SOL Newer GRE scanners have very sensitive front ends (receive) if you add a signal booster all that you will do is overload it with unacceptable results

 

[gary123]

the basic design is to take a peice of coax (rg58 or rg59) solid conductor for the center core. then about 18 in from the end carefully cut through the outer plastic exposing the ground braid. remove the 18 in of outewr plastic. this will leave a 18 in portion of the cable exposed.

next carefully make a small opening in the braid to expose the center insulator. pull the insulator through the opening you made. you will now have a "T" type of affair at the end of the cable. One leg being the ground braid and the other being the center conductor. you can then expose the center conductor ( leave enough so that the ceter does not short to the ground).

place the center conductor in a vertical position and the ground in the opposite direction and you have your antenna.

Remember the higer up you place this the better. I dont recommend placing it directly near cable tv coax as you will get hit by any leakage from the cable tv cable.

 

[EJB]

I dont think an amplifier will help you much but the antenna we have been discussing might.

I once lived on the ground floor of a house in downtown Toronto, surrounded by other houses right next to a large concrete wall (with a chocolate factory next door) on a road that was probably at one time part of a ravine, aka low down, surrounded by buildings and RF. At the time I was using a Diamond 77RSMA or the BNC equivalent and a Larsen antenna that was good for VHF Hi. Mowat, Toronto's fleetnet tower was strong enough but all others from the home base, Grimsby Hamilton, King City Niagara Falls were great once I got out of the 'hole in the city' but was unable to hear them.

If you are resourceful and have experience with coax, maybe you can run a wire or something and connect it to your scanner. I have a home brew wire hanger I cut for VHF Hi with good coax connected to a mag mount that I have jimmeyed on a metal tin hanging near a window.

 

[frankh]

If you don't want to roll your own antenna a old school cell mag-mount antenna works surprisingly well for fleetnet as well as general scanning and they are very inexpensive the only other thing they need is an TNC to BNC adapter.
402635 BNC male to TNC Female - Durham Radio Sales and Service Canada