Scanner antennas

[bill67]

I am looking for a better antenna. Can someone advise what will work good to receive from 20 miles away a EDACS system. I now use a RS Discone mounted on top of garage with so so reception of EDACS.. Wondering if a YAGGI type would help. Can anybody tell me what they think would work best. Thanks BILL67

 

[Northerner71]

I just installed a ST-2 and a 25 foot tower and I love it. The price was right and I am receiving towers as far away as 50km, maybe further since I am not a 100% where the towers are. I had a discone before and it was easily spotted by neighbours and such and right away people would say,"he's got a scanner, or that I am noisy, etc." My ST-2 is a different story it doesn't look like a conventional antenna so people think it is for HDTV. I love it.

 

[davidmc36]

That ST-2 looks like a nice unit with good range coverage. I made a 800 yagi for EDACS and it gives great performance even a few feet off the ground. If your interest is limited to just one range the yagi is a good choice.

 

[bill67]

antennas

Thanks for the response--would like to know how to build a yaggi -- could you send some specs on the one you built and does it match up to 50 ohm coax cable-- any info would be greatly appreciated. thanks BILL.

 

[Forts]

I've got a Radio Shack discone and it's awful on 800mhz.... Quite decent on VHF and UHF though. So I bought myself an 800mhz yagi on Ebay (I think it was being sold as for use with a cell phone). Attached it to a motorized antenna mast and mounted it up in my attic. From Strathroy I can fairly easily pull in the Chatham and Sarnia EDACS systems, and the London stuff just booms in. Chatham and Sarnia can be a little sketchy sometimes but I'm looking at 60 - 100km's away, so I can't really complain. During the summer months I can pull in the St Clair County MPSCS site quite well.

Edit - Just took a look at Ebay and the 800mhz ones currently on there are all fairly pricey ($50/$60 and up). I think I only paid about $25 or $30 for mine, plus I picked up a chunk of LMR400 cable for quite cheap. Gotta remember your antenna is only as good as your cable and connectors.

 

[gary123]

fonts you could also run a CATV quality isolated splitter (not a dollar store device) and combine the 800 antenna back to the discone if you wanted to have both antennas on one feed.

 

[dosboot]

Where can you get a high quality splitter? I would like to use a 800mhz and a airband antenna.


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[dosboot]

So just a HQ CATV splitter will do?


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[Forts]

I use catv splitters for 1 antenna on multiple radios... never tried multiple antennas with one radio. Most of my radios are dedicated to a service or band so it's not usually a big deal for me.

 

[dosboot]

So what splitter do you use? Can you post a picture are a link to where It can be found?


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[Lexxx]

I use this antenna splitter to connect 4 scanners to one antenna

There are several threads on this site talking about this and similar splitter units. Click this search link

Cheers

 

[VA3SOM]

I right now have St.2 on a 20 ft tower, soon to put my new ham tower up so i can get a nice 2 meter 70 CM antenna up. Working on installing a splitter system so i can hook up all 3 of my scanners at once.

 

[bill67]

Yaggi antenna

Thanks for the replies, I was wondering about which cable to use (and splitters) because aren`t scanners usually designed for 50 Ohm impedance wire? Cable TV (CO-AX) is 75 OHM- -Forts, you are using LMR400, I`m not familiar with that--what impedance is it? I remember years ago it was important to match antenna to wire and receiver using RG52 or RG8 for long runs. IN this area there are lots of cellular type yaggis used to receive internet so it shouldn`t be a problem to pick one up but I just wonder how they match up to receiver (RS-197 & RS-96) impedance wise or is it no big deal. BILL.

 

[frankh]

Bill the impedance miss match for receive is no big deal just use quality RG6 and good connectors (snap n seal) and it will work fine, happy listening

 

[Forts]

Here is a nice page with a few charts showing various types of cable and their signal loss over different frequencies. You can see that LMR-400 has roughly a 3.9db loss at 900mhz where RG-6 is down 6db over 100 feet. That's quite a loss in signal! LMR-1200 only loses a little over 1db at 900mhz, but I bet it's expensive as hell. So depending on the bands you want to listen to, it can pay off to choose your cable carefully. On my discone I'm using quad shield RG-6 and as I mentioned earlier it works excellent on VHF and UHF. For my 800mhz yagi I figured there was no sense crippling it by hooking it up to RG-xx so I sprung for 50' of LMR-400.... which can be pretty expensive retail, but you can often find shorter chunks of it on Ebay for a decent price. Shipping can be pricey though, it's heavy stuff.

Coax Attenuation Chart

 

[bill67]

Thanks again for the quick response---Looks like I will be looking for a new cable, thanks Forts for the charts---I have a lot to learn since coming back to scanning not to mention how to operate a computer. BILL

 

[bill67]

Just a quick question Forts. I trying to visuallize that LMR400 plugged in to the top of my PRO96 OR do you reduce cable size when getting near receiver-- Just wondering...BILL

 

[davidmc36]

Thanks for the response--would like to know how to build a yaggi -- could you send some specs on the one you built and does it match up to 50 ohm coax cable-- any info would be greatly appreciated. thanks BILL.

This is the YAG that I built. Impedence would much higher than 50 I guess. Seemed to work well with a 300-75 balun. Made it from pieces of a broken TV antenna. Can get some dimensions if you like. Driven element is half wave.

 

[Forts]

Just a quick question Forts. I trying to visuallize that LMR400 plugged in to the top of my PRO96 OR do you reduce cable size when getting near receiver-- Just wondering...BILL

The LMR-400 comes up under my desk to a splitter.. then I have 2 short (3 or 4 feet max) runs of RG-6 going to my radios. It would indeed be brutal trying to land that cable on the top of a handheld.