What Next?

[Dalan]

Hi guys. I need some help as to what I should do next.

I have a BC246T that pretty much enables me to monitor everything I want to hear as long as I'm
outside. Once I bring the radio inside the house I lose the ability to hear radio traffic in an
adjoining county. My thought was to put up an outside antenna. I didn't really want to "improve"
reception any, just be able to hear inside the house what I could hear outside with the factory
antenna. I got a Centerfire discone, installed it outside on a 10' mast. I mounted it using a SO-239
to F adapter,60-70 feet of RG6QS coax and a solderless right angle BNC connection.

My reception of AIR and 155 mhz radio traffic improved, however, I've lost reception of 450 and 800
mhz radio traffic from an adjoining county.

My question is "What do I do next"? Do I get a antenna amplifier? Do I get a better (scantenna) antenna?
Do I replace the coax with LMR400?

It seems to me that the most cost effective (read cheapest) thing to do would be to get a scantenna,
however I want to do what WORKS.

I'm located in Elkhart, In., the 450 & 800 mhz traffic I'm trying to monitor is in St. Joe County, I figure
It's 15-20 air miles away.

Thanks for any input!

Dave

 

[squale]

did you get a Scantenna yet? http://www.antennawarehouse.com/Scanner/Scantenna.htm

I wonder what anteanna is better.. the Scantenna above or this antenna: http://www.antennawarehouse.com/Scanner/Superdiscone.htm

I too am really mainly concerned with Airband (108-137MHz)

 

[Tweekerbob]

Your problem is probably somewhere in the coax and connectors.

If you can hear what you want to hear with the stock rubber ducky, then you should be able to hear the same the discone.

I would first try it without the right angle BNC connector. I suspect that might be the problem. Some are not made real well and because of poor design can sometimes create problems in UHF and above reception.

If that doesn't solve your problem, then try the LMR-400. Try to get a good quality pl-259 and a BNC that you can solder directly to the LMR. This will eliminate adapters. Although it doesn't look as nice, I would probably not use the right angle BNC adapter.

Ryan

 

[kb2vxa]

Hi all,

"Your problem is probably somewhere in the coax and connectors."

I agree, it's SO easy to crap up a connector causing a short or damaging the coax. It's not what you think, a short at one frequency is open at another, that's how we make coax stub filters. Then too the coax itself may be damaged somewhere along it's length, even shorted.

While far fetched in your case, an old trick to sabotage someone's station is to stick a pin in the coax, then cut it off flush so it's hard to find and impossible to remove. If it's in the right place it forms a sort of filter and will be a sort of frequency selective short. Maybe an angry neighbor with TVI or some disgruntled CBer pinned your coax.

Antennas often suffer from mistaken identity. I once made and erected a simple groundplane for my scanner and immediately a neighbor came a knockin' complaining I was messing up her TV. No sort of explanation satisfied her, the last thing she said before I gave her the boot was "Well, it's an antenna!". A friend had the same problem but his quick wit saved the day and perplexed the neighbor at the same time. When the neighbor asked him what it was he told him it's an old Polish (he's Polish) charm to drive away evil spirits. The neighbor asked why his TV went nuts when the antenna went up so my friend told him those spirits posessed his TV so he needed one of those funny looking antennas to drive them out.

"THE SOW IS MINE!"

 

[Dalan]

Thanks for the tips guys. Here's an update.

I replaced all the coax and connectors and got no improvement in reception. After contacting Centerfire Antennas, I determined that their product did not meet my needs. I put up a Scantenna and everything is just fine now.

I should have done that in the first place, but I was hoping to get by with something a little smaller and I was afraid of overloading my 246T with the local VHF frequencies. That did not happen, so I'm happy as a bug in a rug!

Dave