Scantenna

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NuthinFancy

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So any balun will do the trick, I just wanted to make sure before I got up on the roof. I will check out Radio Shacks website .Thank You,
 

dlwtrunked

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Isn't that a standard $5 Radio-Shack 300/75 ohm type that you can get anywhere? Just be sure to weather seal it properly so no water intrusion can happen.

/Ubbe

Actually a couple decades back, I was in the same situation of him and had 4 or 5 different ones in my parts supply. I tried each and there were notable differences in performance. Oddly the smallest one I had (no brand) gave me the best signal level.
 

Ubbe

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Someone mentioned, probably a couple of years ago here in RR, that he got something like 10 baluns from Radio-Shack when they closed down business and several of them performed porly and some didn't work at all. So the quality can be a problem. But those TV-antenna baluns are designed for 50MHz-700Mhz so should work ok for use with scanner frequencies.

/Ubbe
 

DJ11DLN

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I learned the hard way to give those things a trial on the ground before putting them up in the air. That was back in the '80s and it took me 3 tries to get a good one.
 

emt_531

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Also, take a look at the length of the connectors. I bought one off Amazon for the same reason and had to split the wire down the middle to make it reach both connectors on the antenna. Even with it split all the way, it still was barely long enough.
 

Ubbe

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Keep in mind that the two wires to the antenna are at the balanced end of the balun so try to keep away from any metal, it has to be at some distance to not throw of the balance that could have an impact on the antennas perfomance.

/Ubbe
 
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