"Soliloquy" wrote:

As to signal strengths and feedline loss, the signals are actually
greater now then when using the "rubber duck" antenna.

How are you determining what the signal strengths are? (I'm talking about
actual rf signal levels at the input to the scanner, NOT what you're seeing
on an "S" meter or hearing from the speaker.)

If your outdoor antenna were delivering more signal strenghth to your
scanner, your intermod would get worse, not better.

As I tried to explain, when the scanner is subjected to STRONG local
(unwanted) signals, the scanner will be de-sensitized. This will make it
difficult to hear weaker signals. If attenuation is placed between the
antenna and scanner, this "de-sensitization" effect will be reduced, and
weak signals will actually appear stronger. In other words, less signal
strength may actually improve reception in your case.

Often folks try using pre-amps to improve reception, only to find that the
preamp degrades reception (especially with handhelds). This is similar to
what I described above. Sometimes, less is more!

my Yaesu VX-5R is virtually destroyed in this location, as
are the other handhelds that I have if I use them un-attenuated.

There you go. Adding attenuation improved your reception. I'm speculating
that the attenuation (loss) in your feedline is having the same effect.

Brand new, RG6, Radio Shack supplied and about 85 feet. The antenna has a
300 to 75 ohm matching transformer. At first I was concerned that the RG6
should have been RG58

RG-6 is much better than RG-58. However, 85 feet is a pretty long run. All
coax cables have higher loss as you go higher in frequency. If your
overload/intermod problems are indeed caused by nearby cell sites, those 800
MHz signals will be attenuated more than signals at lower frequencies. And
your outdoor antenna is probably less effective at 800 Mhz than at lower
frequencies. So your antenna and feedline are acting like a "low-pass"
filter in that they attenuate the higher frequencies. All of that is
consistent with what you are hearing.


Art N2AH