the local store only deals in scanners and ham radios but they didn't tell me what brand it was the STRIDSBERG model claims it has 4 db gain and 3 db loss afters spitting 4 times so it should be a 1 db gain and no loss and the also claim that i shouldn't lose any of those bands that i monitor
btw i took the portable in the car today and went 10 miles north ( which is farther from buffalo) and the pulse stayed the same next trip i will go closer
That sounds correct for the Stridsberg multicouplers.
They have enough gain to overcome the loss of the internal splitters and the output is barely more than the input so almost flat which is the 1dB figure you came up with.
If you do find out who makes the one at the local place, please post the info! Being it comes from a radio dealer, I'm thinking it may have the proper connectors on it which is important in my eyes.
I'd be willing to try one even if it is band limited if it comes with the proper connectors.
I have a bank of older scanners that I monitor only VHF High with so something like the sound of that device sounds perfect for the price. I do not need any gain though but I can deal with that. I have an adjustable 50 ohm attenuator that was made for the cell industry that works great. It has four switches each rated in dB. They are 8, 4, 2 and 1 dB each so with all on, I can get a -15 dB attenuation. I use it on the older double conversion scanners to kill intermod. Trouble is, it feeds and entire 8 port Stridsberg multicoupler and I really only need the attenuation on 4 of the scanners. I don't feel like buying a 4 port Stridsberg due to the cost as you found! Something like the $30 dollar couler sounds great if it is made for 50 ohms and with the proper connectors. BNC in my case.
Good luck on your drive towards Buffalo. I wonder if that pulsing is coming out of Canada?
I uas a Stridsberg 2 port passiver coupler in reverse. Two antennas into one output that feeds the 8 port multi's. One port has my yagi and the other has a general all band vertical.
The Yagi has an 800 MHz Stridsberg preamp on it and I place a mini-circuits 700 MHz hi pass filter after the Stridsberg amp so the amp does not influence the signals below the mini-circuits filter.
Even though the Stridsberg amp has tuned circuits so it only amplifies they 800 range, I was finding that it was still putting a signal out in the 450 MHz range. The mini-circuits filter cured that and also helped with multipath distortion from having two antennas out of phase.
I had to play with spacing of the Yagi from the vertical but the end result was well worth it for the one 800 MHz P25 system that I monitor.
I take that all back mostly, I'd forgot that I bought a Mini-Circuits ZRL-1150LN+ preamp. It is strong though so I must attenuate its output some otherwise I risk overloading the scanners used for 700 thru 900 MHz.
The mini-circuits preamp has a super low noise figure and it covers from 650 to 1400 MHz but I still use the mini-circuits BHP-700+ high pass filter to keep the Yagi's signal out of the verticals signal. The vertical is still allowed to pass its entire range on to the multicouplers and I run that way most of them time and only fire up the preamp when I monitor one or two distant 800 MHz systems.
The Stridsberg passive 2 port coupler (MC202) is good from 10 thru 1000 MHz but being passive, it does add about -3dB loss.
I can hook the Yagi direct to a scanner and get the signal I want but with a lot of errors due to a weak signal so I still need the preamp.
It was a complicated setup getting everything working without one antenna cancelling out the other and I spent countless hours testing reception of different systems with halfway weak signals when run direct from a single antenna. And then I'd throw the passive splitter in as a combiner and test again. Once I had the spacing between the two antennas far enough apart, things started working fantastic.
Even more local 800 MHz P25 systems do not have any issues when using both antennas at the same time.
Mini-Circuits also makes very quality RF stuff. You can build about anything you need from the stuff they sell.
A lot of their amps are very hot though (hi gain) so you must be careful otherwise you will surely overload a typical scanner.
They also sell the little board mounted splitters that are used in multicouplers but you need to fabricate a copper clad pc board so you can add in the needed filtering otherwise things will not work out very well.
I also use Stridsberg MCA104 multicouplers for the HF gear. They also work very well up to about 30 MHz. Some are good down to 10 kHz also so they work well for MW and LW reception if you ever get into that and only have one antenna. I started with a pair of longwire antennas and they did ok on some bands but the noise level here is horrible. I'm in an apartment so no control over the barrage of electronics in the others apartments. I ended up buying a Wellbrook and then a Pixel magnetic loop antenna. Those things work fantastic for my HF reception! I put them on rotors as they are really good for nulling signals from the sides during the daytime. Not as good at night when most signals are skywave though. My noise floor has dropped to almost zero most times. It gets so quiet that you think something is wrong.
I hooked one of the loops through a Stridsberg MCS-104 multicoupler and it worked fantastic.
I later found a pair of mini-circuits passive multicoupler splitter/combiners that had a design range of 1 to 500 MHz. They show a -8 dB loss per port but at 30 MHz and below, that is usually acceptable in many cases. So I tried one on an Icom R9000 and tuned some LW stations down around 200 kHz and they worked fantastic. They do show some loss but I've yet to hear a beacon station without the splitter that I could also not hear when the splitter was inline so one sits inline at all times as I needed more than four ports for my HF part of the hobby.
I would not use them for a scanner and V/UHF reception though due to the -8.xx dB loss per port. Some type of a low noise amp would be needed. They do have great port to port isolation though which is needed when combing scanners. They have six output ports or you can use them as a combiner and couple up to six antennas into one output. I've never tried to combine an HF antenna though. I picked those things up for like $5 bucks each at some local surplus electronics shop.
I also have a little mini-circuits preamp (AMP-75+) made for VHF from 5 to 500 MHz but it has too much gain for my purposes. I was going to use it for VHF low band 30 - 50 MHz reception but all the noise from electronics in everyones apartments kind of ruined that idea. Maybe I should put one of the six port splitters after it and it would be ok.
Anyway, you can't go wrong with the Stridsberg equipment. I love the active mutlicouplers as well as their 800 preamps. I also had them design a 700 MHz preamp that worked great as well. The preamps are filtered so they do not amplify out of band signals which is exactly what most preamps do. That makes most preamps useless for scanners as they also amplify all the crud that is in the air so you end up worse than you were before you installed a preamp.
Please post back or send me a PM if you get the make and model of the four port multicoupler the local shop was recommending.
Good luck with whatever you end up trying!
