Try not to laugh.. (can this be done?)

[Jay911]

Hi all,

I have a Discone antenna I keep intending on putting up on my house's roof, probably using the mast for my old VHF TV antenna which I no longer use. One of the things that's holding me back is I can't decide where to put the lead when it comes into the house. The two places I would want to monitor from most often are at opposite corners of the basement, and the antenna would be atop the 2nd floor directly above one of those points.

I also have a number of things I might want to hook up. A number of scanners, all with BNC connections of course; and one UHF MCS2000 mobile operating as a base station (if it can do that off a discone).

I got an idea the other night that I could run cabling from the antenna line to a multicoupler, and run the outputs from the multicoupler through the walls to BNC jack plates at my various 'monitoring points', where'd I'd just run a short length of cable to whatever device was there.

Is this possible? Or would I be inviting way too much signal loss?

 

[OpSec]

I'm not laughing...I think it's a great idea. Only issue is the combining of the transmitter with all the receivers. RX-only system combining is cheaper than combining TX/RX systems.

IMHO, use the discone for the RX only applications and use an appropriate UHF antenna for the MCS mounted above or below the discone. The discone isn't a good TX antenna anyway.

Other than that, putting wall jacks in with connectors is a great idea. Consider an N connector for the UHF though...will save a fair amount of loss.

 

[LarrySC]

If you use RG-6 for Discone, then you can use a TV/VCR type splitter inside. This type installation you can afford. If it works then consider commerical splitter for many more bucks. Keep Two-way antenna seperate and clear of discone. Better yet turn off scanner when talking. My entire station is RG-6 and "F" connectors. Works better than anything else I found. Good Luck.

 

[nyscan00]

I never knew you could connect more than one scanner to one antenna (discone). Would you recieve lots of signal loss because ofthe splits in the connection or would you receive decent reception? I would like to connect my bc780xlt and bc80xlt to 1 single discone...all I would need is a cable spliter and extra coax ? Thanks!

 

[Jay911]

I never knew you could connect more than one scanner to one antenna (discone). Would you recieve lots of signal loss because ofthe splits in the connection or would you receive decent reception? I would like to connect my bc780xlt and bc80xlt to 1 single discone...all I would need is a cable spliter and extra coax ? Thanks!

I got reminded of this concept/project when I saw an ad for this 8-port multicoupler on the main page of the site.

I think what I may do is leave the MCS separate as it is now.. with a magmount slapped on the center of my deep freeze lid. That way if I want to toss it into a vehicle, all I need to do is hook it up to the cig lighter cord I built off a standard power cord, put the antenna on the roof, and there you go.

Thanks all

 

[leftystrat]

I never knew you could connect more than one scanner to one antenna (discone).

I have a discone in my attic that's feeding three scanners and a 2m/70cm rig (rcv-only). The trick here was to pick up a cable tv splitter with amplifier. If you use a passive splitter, you will lose 3db per split. The cable amp/splitter makes up for this.

You can get them almost anywhere, but pay attention to the amount of gain and frequency response of the box. I think mine goes about 30MHz-1GHz.

 

[OutPost]

RG8X-95 / Centerfire Discone 25mhz to 1300mhz

I have a question?? I bought a Centerfire Discone 25/1300mhz for receiving and ~150mhz for transmissions. I'm using RG8X-95 Coax, the antenna is at the top of the mast and my cheapo other scanner antenna is at the bottom. In the 460 mhz range, my lower cheap antenna works better than the Discone.

Should I clip the vertical and down leads (radials??) to match the discone leads for better 460 mhz reception? I don't know the formula, but what would the length be?

Here's the other quagmire....

I bought an MX7000 scanner which receives up to 1300mhz. Should I leave my Centerfire Discone alone?? The MX7000 would be the only radio on that antenna.

I also have a very short rubber (cell) antenna on the roof for my cellphone. The coax of course is thin...if I have to, can I use that antenna for the MX7000 freq range 800 to 1300mhz?? Until there is more money, I have to improvise :roll:

Thanks