Scanner Advice

Hi guys,

I'd like to get my Da a scanner for his birthday. I'm pretty sure he'd really like it (he had one years ago and used it quite a bit). Ideally, a portable model, but he'd use in the house a fair bit too (about a mile from the nearest town). Anyway, I had a quick flick around and came across this one on Amazon.

So I have a couple of questions:

1. Is that a good model?
2. How is the range on these things (geographical range, not frequency)?
3. I realise that a regular TV terrestrial aerial is designed for TV signals, but do they help to receive more channels? And I'm guessing just strip the coax and attach a BNC connector.

Thanks for any / all help!

Molloys Clondalkin

You should have a look on adverts.ie lots of great bargains there
as for which one is best no one can answer that as it all depends what he would like to listen to, once again different aeriels cover different freqs so I would suggets a good all round discone and you can fit a bnc on to any antenna. I odnt know what kind of tv aerial he has so I cant comment on the freq alloc of that.
And with the rubber duck antenna supplied its prob a fair estimate that a ten mile radius (built up area) would be around average depending on the tx stations power.
Hope this helps

Molloys Clondalkin

Molloys Clondalkin wrote: »

You should have a look on adverts.ie lots of great bargains there
as for which one is best no one can answer that as it all depends what he would like to listen to, once again different aeriels cover different freqs so I would suggets a good all round discone and you can fit a bnc on to any antenna. I odnt know what kind of tv aerial he has so I cant comment on the freq alloc of that.
And with the rubber duck antenna supplied its prob a fair estimate that a ten mile radius (built up area) would be around average depending on the tx stations power.

10 miles... that pretty decent as is. The TV aerial is... a TV aerial (UHF/VHF). That's about as far as my knowledge goes. :rolleyes: Reckon I'll give a BNC connector a lash first, then see if it's worth the discone antenna.

Molloys Clondalkin wrote: »

Hope this helps

Quite a bit actually. Didn't know the reception radius and discone antenna. Thanks mate.

Thinking I might get myself one aswell

watty

Rubber duck 15km in open, 2km in built up, 200km on a mountain top.

Roof aerials up to 300km depending on type of aerial and your location.

The RF Tech Guy

watty wrote: »

Roof aerials up to 300km depending on type of aerial and your location.

...and with suitable propogation conditions..... A more reasonable range for a general coverage aerial would perhaps be as far as 20kms under normal propogation conditions. This can of course be extended by several means including specific aerials, careful choice of mounting location etc...

VHF and UHF are generally line of sight.

The RF Tech Guy

Uncle Wil wrote: »

Hi guys,


So I have a couple of questions:

1. Is that a good model?

That depends on what you want from a radio. Fine for general purpose listening on the bands it covers.

1. I realise that a regular TV terrestrial aerial is designed for TV signals, but do they help to receive more channels? And I'm guessing just strip the coax and attach a BNC connector.

This can be done but won't provide the best results. You definitely will notice a difference but better performance would be gained from using an aerial designed for a scanner.. (Won't go into the technicalities but the cable and aerial are not "matched" to the scanner you've linked to. The aerial polarity may also be wrong for communications signals, you'll typically want the spikes or elements on the aerial pointing up and down)

Be aware that a handheld scanner can sometimes be overloaded by strong signals when used with an external aerial. A desktop scanner / receiver generally offers better srong handling capability.

That's awesome. Thanks for all the tips lads.