scanSydney

I'm preparing to build a small shack in the house now the car is complete.

I'll be having two or three radios; the frequencies i want to cover are:
460 MHz
400 - 420 MHz
477MHz - Possibly.

The first two will be receive only and transmit on CB.

Basically i don't know a thing about base antenna's. From having a look around Discone's seem to be the go for receiving. Correct me if wrong.
Also unsure of which size of cable to be using, the antennas will be mounted on the roof of a second story house and running right down to the ground, something like RG6? Again please help me here.

So go ahead and recommend me styles, brands and models of antennas as well as cable specifics and what ever other equipment i need.

Cheers!
Alex

Run rg-213, best thing for its price.
As for the antenna im still trying to work out what i want to do1

I couldn't see a discone being any good for myself as i mostly rx only on 400mhz band.
I was more thinking a 2m long 12dbi antenna, wonder how that would go.

Im currently using a cb antenna and it works good, but i want more.

how are the antennas going AlexMc ?

Yeah theyre great thanks for the help!
I've been looking at RFI antennas for the house, but dont really know what im looking for.

I used to use a UHF CB 9db colliner, not sure what brand & using RG213 coax mounted about 20ft above the roof line when I lived at South Penrith, it did a good job from about 400-500Mhz rx (my scanner only went to 520Mhz)

If you plan to transmit on UHF CB then a UHF vertical rather than a discone would be the go, the problem with discones is that sometimes (depending on your location) it will be pulling in out of band signals ie" VHF pagers etc, so if you are primarly a UHF operator stick with a UHF CB stick

Michael

Instead of starting a new thread i have another question.
What do you guys use for speakers at home?

I was looking to get some flush mounted wall or ceiling speakers, meaning i would also need an amp of some sort.

What do you recommend?

Cheers again,
Alex

Alex & all,

This might be resurrecting a "dead" issue but I wondered why no-one had thought of using a couple of side-mounted dipoles for this purpose? A pair of dipoles phased would give you 3dBd, and you can get dipoles that cover 400-520MHz at better than 1.5:1. A colinear is inherently narrow band (a couple of megs at best) and is going to be pretty ordinary at 50MHz below its centre freq. I also wondered if some of these might be available cheap/free second hand if hobbyists approached certain riggers as I know we get rid of ours after 5-10 years & I have stainless SMDs here that sweep perfect after many years of service. I've always found dipoles to be superior to colinears, particularly for noise due to dipoles being grounded, unlike colinears that are not.

Cheers,


Richard