My Updated Listening Station

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gootch

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My county finally got the Phase II system running so it was time for an upgrade. I guess the scanners are self explanatory. I also have a BCD996HP in the basement for my RR feed also my old BCD996T that now provides NOAA Weather Radio for my weather website. The Davis VP2 supplies all the weather data for my weather website here Sun Prairie Wisconsin Weather - Home . What you dont see is all the clutter on the table I cleaned off before taking the pic and me just to the left in my recliner. Thanks for looking.

Andy
 

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gootch

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Sun Prairie Wisconsin
Clean and simple, I like it! What's your antenna setup and what to you use the 396 for?


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I have a Diamond Discone feeding the top BCD536HP and the bottom BCD536HP is connected to my OTA TV Antenna not sure of the model but it is picking up my the County's new P25 Phase II. couldnt get anything with the discone for Phase II but the TV antenna seems to be working well with good quality audio. I use the 396 primarily when I travel. As I said in my first post I am now using my BCD996T for NOAA Radio on my website here Sun Prairie Wisconsin Weather - NOAA Weather Radio WXJ87 Madison I had a dedicated weather radio with a stock antenna and poor reception and now the 996 is hooked up to the Discone with much better audio quality.
 

BlackSheepDue

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Naples, ME
I have a Diamond Discone feeding the top BCD536HP and the bottom BCD536HP is connected to my OTA TV Antenna not sure of the model but it is picking up my the County's new P25 Phase II. couldnt get anything with the discone for Phase II but the TV antenna seems to be working well with good quality audio. I use the 396 primarily when I travel. As I said in my first post I am now using my BCD996T for NOAA Radio on my website here Sun Prairie Wisconsin Weather - NOAA Weather Radio WXJ87 Madison I had a dedicated weather radio with a stock antenna and poor reception and now the 996 is hooked up to the Discone with much better audio quality.



Thanks for the explanation. I've always been curious about using TV antennas. I've heard of plenty of people using them but I'm skeptical of how they stack up to dedicated scanner antennas.


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N9JIG

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Thanks for the explanation. I've always been curious about using TV antennas. I've heard of plenty of people using them but I'm skeptical of how they stack up to dedicated scanner antennas.

I have had pretty good results using TV antennas for scanners. While TV antennas are horizontally polarized they still work remarkably well for scanners. The freq ranges overlap all across the board.

Some of the best scanner antennas are actually redesigns of TV antennas or made by TV antenna companies borrowing on their designs. The Grove Scanner Beam, the ST-2 and others are basically TV antennas modified for scanner use.

Another nice thing about TV antennas and scanner use is the accessories are compatible. I use TV style RG6 for feedlines on several antennas, TV amps work great on scanners and so do distribution systems like splitters and multicouplers. Just get the good stuff, not the cheap crud.
 

N1SQB

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N9PBD

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It's probably not a big deal if you're getting good performance out of your TV antenna that's horizontally polarized, but cross polarization (vertical to horizontal) has an approximately 20 db penalty. In other words, your signal from a vertically polarized source, received on a horizontally polarized antenna will be nearly 100 times weaker than if you used the same antenna in a vertical orientation.

But, like I said, if you're getting good enough performance the way it is, it probably isn't worth messing with.

Greg

P.S.
Nice setup!
 
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N9JIG

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It's probably not a big deal if you're getting good performance out of your TV antenna that's horizontally polarized, but cross polarization (vertical to horizontal) has an approximately 20 db penalty. In other words, your signal from a vertically polarized source, received on a horizontally polarized antenna will be nearly 100 times weaker than if you used the same antenna in a vertical orientation.

But, like I said, if you're getting good enough performance the way it is, it probably isn't worth messing with.

The numbers are probably right, but the performance aspect of it is not nearly as bad as they would seem. The elevation and capture area will make up for a lot of the polarization loss. That said, it is absolutely true that a properly polarized antenna would work so much better that a wrongly polarized one would.

I actually converted an old TV antenna for scanner use by making it into a multi-element center-fed dipole. I kept the longest element pair for low-band, a short for UHF and a center one for VHF-hi/air, I removed the others and rotated it to a vertical and straightened the elements from their swept back orientation. This made it much less directional and it really worked great, especially on low-band skip back in the late 80's.
 
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