[TheList] Aerials

Fri Feb 9 17:31:03 AEDT 2018

had a SCATX on my vehicle for many years, it worked pretty well. Took it
off when I changed cars and it's lived in the garage since... the outer
plastic is a bit worse for wear now, I probably need to heatshrink it or
something before I use it again in the outdoors.

I have been trying to use something much lower profile on my wagon (found a
wee magnetic-base thing on Trademe) but it's still not quite enough for
what I want to mainly listen to (local Fire dispatch), I had been
suspecting my scanner of going deaf however I don't have anything realistic
to compare it with (my second scanner LCD screen is broken, so it's a
one-trick pony these days).

For mobile use I will say the SCATX is just a little bit conspicuous!
Unless you have a truck or ute in which case it'd probably look the part.

At home I have an old dick smith scanning antenna (can't tell you what it
was called, it was a plastic tube about 2cm dia with a loop at one end and
coax coming out the other) which I have draped on the the outside of my
garage, gives me fairly good service but am expecting it to die at some
point due to weather exposure (seals are dodgy now).  By the sounds of it
the SCATX will be it's successor!

Mark.

On Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 10:59 AM, Ray Colvill <raycolvill1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just buy a commercial unit that works fantastically. You want the MOBILE
> ONE model SCATX 25mhz ----1300mhz reception. Get this maybe from Jaycar and
> you want a base with cable to connect it to your scanner. I will personally
> vouch for this one as the best commercially available scanner antenna and i
> have 3 on vehicles, one in my bedroom and one spare unit.
>
> And it looks good as well.
>
> Rayc
>
> On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 11:02 PM, Brendan Sheehy <Shiters_r_us at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I find a 1m whip to work sufficiently on 75mhz 140mhz and 480mhz give or
>> take you get a ¼ wave on 75, ½ wave on 140 & 2 x full wave on 480.
>>
>> As stated fine antenna tuning is only required for transmitting.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Brendan
>>
>> On 8/02/2018 9:14 p.m., Grant Carroll wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> This may seem a stupid question to some of you but I think it needs to be
>> asked - what is the optimum length for an aerial for a scanner receiving
>> VHF communications i.e. the ESA and ESB bands.
>>
>> Obviously, it needs to be longer than a UHF aerial but what is the ideal
>> length. I’ve used aerials of various lengths on my scanners and with VHF I
>> find the longer the aerial the worse the reception after about two metres -
>> in other words bigger is not better!
>>
>> But I’m sure there is someone on here who can tell me the perfect length
>> and the reason for it.
>>
>> Cheers and thanks for your help.
>>
>> Grunter1.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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