NOW WHAT?

[skydive1860]

I want to build an antenna out of coax if I can. I have trees next to my window about 30 to 50 feet tall and about 200 by 400 feet of woods.
This is for receive only. I am unable to find the hidden secret of if I can use coax of any type as the antenna. Also wondering if I can splice together the three thin wires in a chinese surveillance cable and use the wire instead of 14 gauge. Or not cut anything and connect bnc's together.
A sloper or dipole or long wire or inverted V are just fine to build and the signal goes into a sdr with an upconverter that is uninstalled I also have an unused new Grundig executive satellit and have been warned to consider the antenna going into the plug or wrapped around the fm antenna as it can cause real problems using an extension antenna.
Now I have 55 feet of 213 with connectors, and 50 feet of rg 8, and 20 feet of rg 58a.
Not to mention 300 feet of three wire surveillance camera cable with connectors on each end.

What would you do if you understand why I can't figure out if I can use the 213 or the camera cable. Can I measure ohms to determine needs for a balun. I can use a multimeter if I really try hard.
I have yet to install a driver for the sdr program also.

No idea what I'm doing which is nice. I know a little theory too much about scanning. Beginner stuff like meters and propagation and nulls.

Finally! Use a counter poise? Add a ground rod connection somewhere?

Thanks for reading and Good Luck!

 

[krokus]

You could use coaxial cable as an antenna, but then it would not be your feedline. You would have to use the outer conductor, better known as the shield in most applications. Then couple that to the center of your feedline.

Similar to how thing like the YouLoop operate.

 

[skydive1860]

Just to confirm. Take the shield and splice it onto the center pin on the 213 cable, then wire that to the antenna input on the receiver
Might I also attach the the center pin to the surrounding collar of the PL 259 connector and then take that wire to the receiver, making the antenna one wire from joining ground to center pin? I also purchased a you loop for an uninstalled SDR. As I understand, the you loop and the J pole are mostly for uhf and vhf and the 213 converted to one long wire is best at ham receive only?
Thanks again for reading and responding.