Modified CB antenna for Scanner

I live in a metal sided house and am rural too. I don't get anything
on my scanner, and when something does come in, all I get is noise.
I need an outdoor antenna but dont want to spend any money on this.
I have a dozen or more old CB antennas. The coax from one of them
will directly attach to the scanner.

My question is how to modify the antenna to get the correct wave
length. What length do I need to cut it to, (or add some on) Does
anyone have any info?

PS. These are all car type CB antennas. I realize this wont be a
perfect antenna, and a commercial one would be better, but anything is
better than what I got now. My neighbor gets all kinds of reception,
just with the telescoping antenna on the back of the radio, but he is
in a plastic sided house. So, just getting something outdoors will
help me.

Thanks

Mark

 

[DCT Dictator]

What frequency range are you interested in monitoring? If it's lowband
(30 to 50) it should perform better than any indoor antenna as is.

Other question is what kind of CB antenna? A 100" whip trimmed to 3
foot would be half wave for 155.

I've used one of those base loaded antenna mounts for a mount, and
soldered an 18" whip of coathanger wire to a PL259 connector, filed
down the stinger and it threaded right on the mount.




maradcliff@UNLISTED.com wrote:

I live in a metal sided house and am rural too. I don't get anything
on my scanner, and when something does come in, all I get is noise.
I need an outdoor antenna but dont want to spend any money on this.
I have a dozen or more old CB antennas. The coax from one of them
will directly attach to the scanner.

My question is how to modify the antenna to get the correct wave
length. What length do I need to cut it to, (or add some on) Does
anyone have any info?

PS. These are all car type CB antennas. I realize this wont be a
perfect antenna, and a commercial one would be better, but anything is
better than what I got now. My neighbor gets all kinds of reception,
just with the telescoping antenna on the back of the radio, but he is
in a plastic sided house. So, just getting something outdoors will
help me.

Thanks

Mark

--
Lower your cable bill! http://careers.comcast.com/choices/searchlocations.asp

 

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:14:02 -0500, maradcliff@UNLISTED.com wrote:

I live in a metal sided house and am rural too. I don't get anything
on my scanner, and when something does come in, all I get is noise.
I need an outdoor antenna but dont want to spend any money on this.
I have a dozen or more old CB antennas. The coax from one of them
will directly attach to the scanner.

My question is how to modify the antenna to get the correct wave
length. What length do I need to cut it to, (or add some on) Does
anyone have any info?

PS. These are all car type CB antennas. I realize this wont be a
perfect antenna, and a commercial one would be better, but anything is
better than what I got now. My neighbor gets all kinds of reception,
just with the telescoping antenna on the back of the radio, but he is
in a plastic sided house. So, just getting something outdoors will
help me.

Thanks

Mark

Scanners cover many octaves of frequency so a single band antenna like
a CB antenna will not work very good for most of the bands.

You need to make a Discone antenna. Plans can be found on the web.
It will cover many octaves.

 

The most used freqs around here are the 154.___ range.
Not that all of them are, but most are.

I got lots of copper tubing, how do I make one of these?
I got coax from some of the dead CB antennas too, so I probably got
all the parts.

Thank U
Mark

..................


On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 11:03:18 -0500, Mike Berger <berger@shout.net>
wrote:

That's a tough question, because scanners can cover a lot of frequency
ranges. It's difficult to cut an antenna that works reasonably well at
50 MHz, 150 MHz, 450 MHz, and 800 MHz.

If your antennas have loading coils, that will further complicate things,
and could really affect reception at the higher frequencies.

You could make a very inexpensive ground plane antenna using
inexpensive copper tubing and some coax connectors. Cut it to
the right length and it should easily outperform the CB antennas.

maradcliff@UNLISTED.com wrote:

My question is how to modify the antenna to get the correct wave
length. What length do I need to cut it to, (or add some on) Does
anyone have any info?

 

[Mike M.]

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:14:02 -0500, maradcliff@UNLISTED.com wrotF:

I live in a metal sided house and am rural too. I don't get anything
on my scanner, and when something does come in, all I get is noise.
I need an outdoor antenna but dont want to spend any money on this.
I have a dozen or more old CB antennas. The coax from one of them
will directly attach to the scanner.

My question is how to modify the antenna to get the correct wave
length. What length do I need to cut it to, (or add some on) Does
anyone have any info?

PS. These are all car type CB antennas. I realize this wont be a
perfect antenna, and a commercial one would be better, but anything is
better than what I got now. My neighbor gets all kinds of reception,
just with the telescoping antenna on the back of the radio, but he is
in a plastic sided house. So, just getting something outdoors will
help me.

Thanks

Mark
If the CB antenna is center loaded or top loaded it should work

reasonably well. If it is base loaded it probably won't.

I used to use one of the cheap magnet mount center loaded CB antennas
as a mobile scanner antenna and it worked quite well on VHF Hi and
UHF. I also tried one of the base loaded types and that was like
shorted coax.

There are lots of antennas you can build for next to nothing, just do
a google search.