btritch said:
I'm 25 miles north of Jonesboro in Paragould, Greene County, However, I COULD if they weren't digital.. Don't have a digital scanner as of yet..I say yet because I plan to get one SOON! I may keep an eye out for LMR 400 cheap....HOw much gain will I lose splitting RG 6 to two rooms using a 900 - 1000 mhz cable tv splitter? enough to notice?
I agree get LMR-400 at least for the majority of the run down your tower, and into the house. Once you get to your room, then drop it down to RG-58 or RG-8X. Here is some information for you to think about... RG-59 and RG-6 are going to be about the same loss. This is all PER 100 FEET or coax...
RG-59/RG-6 at 150mhz is 3.5 db LOSS
RG-58 at 150mhz is 6.0 db LOSS
at 450 mhz the loss is greater at 7.5 db and higher.
The higher you go in frequency the more your loss will be per 100 feet. Now here is LMR400...
LMR 400 per 100 feet - at 150 mhz 1.5 db loss and 450 mhz 2.7 db loss...
3 DB is HALF of your signal. If you have say 100 feet of RG-6 and you're listening to a department on 155.640 mhz and your antenna has a gain of 2.5 db. You're going to have a loss of 3.5 db, then subtract 2.5 db of gain, you'll come out with a loss overall of 1.0 db loss. And 3 DB is half of your signal. So a quarter of your signal is lost.
But if your antenna is NO GAIN, and I think the scantenna is a unigain antenna, meaning NO GAIN, you have a loss of 3.5 DB. so Over half of your signal is lost in the coax. There are probably several other things you'd hear if you have better coax.
LMR400 at
http://www.universal-radio.com is .79 per foot
and at
http://www.texastowers.com its .69 per foot.
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/cable/coax.html
BTW, all my kin is from up there... grandma is from baldknob, got family in searcy, agusta, mccory, weldon, swifton, my cousin is the postmaster for newport. list goes on and on and on... every time we have a hurricane down here, we go up there heh.
