Raising Discone 10 more feet?

[eorange]

My Diamond discone is roof mounted, about 20 feet up. It has a clear line of sight to everything except the south, where it's about halfway below the roofline.

Would there be any advantage to elevating it another 10 feet? It would clear the roofline. However, would this make a noticeable difference?

My public safety and mil air comes in pretty good, but I am wondering if this would help with monitoring other local air band and possibly marine traffic (coming from the north).

 

[Fast1eddie]

What are you looking to monitor from the south??? Remember a discone is omnidirectional, doubt very much it would be worth the hassle-and tweaking the cable run. Consider adding a directional antenna, what systems are you monitoring???

 

[n8emr]

If you can go another 10ft and still keep the mast straight, why not. As noted you need to extend the coax.

 

[ind224]

Do it!!

Marine like 2m are line of sight so yes, 'git er up'. I'm assuming you are talking VHF.
I always put mine up as high and in the clear as possible. A good test would be the NOAA 162mhz frequencies. How many can you get?

 

[eorange]

I'd like to see if I would be able to hear the CLE tower better; I can hear it faintly on a few freqs. I'd have to extend the coax with a SO-239 -> PL-259 cable. I am now wondering if I can keep the mast straight...will ponder further.

Edit: Don't get me started on NOAA! lol There is a NOAA tower about 2-3 miles from me and it overloads the front end of everything I have on VHF, just about. Good thought, though, I'll give that a try. I think I can just hear that one, not sure...

 

[ridgescan]

I would imagine you would be happy with it because there are probably a lot of stations within the 30 or so mile capability of your discone that are south of you right?

 

[eorange]

I think so. You don't know what you can't hear...but the CLE airport is roughly that way.

 

[kb2vxa]

Height is might but another 10' won't buy you much, not really worth the hassle. Now if you were going up another 30 it would be worth the price of a 50' steel telescopic TV mast and HD wall brackets. If you have a double wall section at the topmost bracket most likely you won't need guys with a light antenna having little wind resistance. I put up a Shakespeare Big Stick CB antenna like that with the mast butted on a cinder block on the ground and it took a hurricane to bend it but it didn't fall. Oh, it's really easy to ground for lightning protection that way, I scrounged a couple of feet of "monster wire" from a power company crew working on lines nearby and secured it to the mast with Wrap Lok.

 

[timmer]

This may be more than you want to spend but a directional antenna from dpd productions like the 118-1000 lp or a create log periodic pointed in the direction of the signals you want to hear would more than do the job. If you put it on a rotor you can point it any direction you want and maybe null out some of the NOAA weather station. The Grove scanner beam will also work, maybe not as good as the DPD antenna but it's a cheaper alternative.