The OP is not looking for a car thru glass antenna installation. He is stuck in his apartment and cannot use an outside antenna and are looking for a suction cup antenna or any other good solution.
I know there where a suction cup antenna for apartment windows that looked like an X and worked at least better than putting the scanner close to the window. I guess there is no way to get a coax cable thru the window so you could have a suction cup antenna outside or hanging from a nail? There is always worse reception behind a window and with the newest low energi loss ones there are almost no signals getting thru.
/Ubbe
Close, and correct. Cannot get anything routed outside (fixed windows). Am playing with the PVC style antennas for the VHF only scanner, and its kind of working. However, this particular home patrol is sitting in the base of the window, the window faces the mountain where the sites are located, however, it is still really low. I really wanted to get something higher, to the top of the window, hoping for a little improvement.
Also, its pretty much common opinion that the OEM little antenna on the home patrol REALLY REALLY sucks, so anything may be an improvement.
If the window has any reflective coatings for energy efficiency, then a window mount antenna will not work.
I took this into consideration. Pretty sure that there are no metallic or reflective tint. Also single pane windows, so i'm lucking out on that.
If this is for a scanner and you live in a apartment building you already have beat 1 thing you have height if you are up in the top floors of the building. If you get a good magnet mount antenna and stick it to a large pizza pan (steel) that will act as a ground plane find the best place in the area of your scanner. You should be able to hear most anything that a glass antenna can receive, it will work just fine in a building I have this set up and it works just fine.
Regrettably, this is on the first floor. However, the window has line of sight to the mountain that a majority of the antennas are located.
As far as mag mounts, i'm REALLY tempted to go with a mag mount either on the metal frame of the window or replacing a ceiling panel with a metal square panel and putting the mag mount on that... in fact that would give me a pretty great ground plane.
I have compared putting an antenna in a window sill and placing an antenna with a magnetic mount on top of a metal filing cabinet. And the metal filing cabinet wins hands down.
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See above. Also, weirdly enough there are NO metal filing cabinets in here. Everything is fake wood.