In article , harryc56
lid says...
Ran the handheld off of a 10' piece of RG6 direct to the discone, There was
a slight trunking reception improvement over the connection inside the
house, but nothing compared to the RS telescoping antenna. So, either the
discone is junk, or I do not have it in the right location. Currently it's
about 15 feet up a mast on the side of the house. Can't roof mount it.
Harryc
--

"HarryC" wrote in message
...
BDK, thanks for the reply. I think you may be onto something with the coax
or antenna. I stuck on a RS telescoping and I got to the nearest trunked
system no problem. So, I guess I'll check out the coax first (It's RG6/U),
then maybe try the scantenna. The discone is brand new, and the RG6 is a
couple of years old. Might try another straight run of coax. Is there an
easy way to test for loss on coax? I could just go right out to the
discone
and run a short piece to the handheld I suppose.
Harryc
--
"BDK" wrote in message
...
In article , harryc56
lid says...
I have a Pro-95. I have a couple of Mot and Edacs trunking systems in
the
region. These are Police trunks in a town about 15 miles from here,
and
another town about 20 miles away. I am running off of an antenna
warehouse
super discone. If I scan between 851.0 and 868.9875 I do not pick up
any
strong repeaters, but otherwise I have no problem receiving as far at
40
miles away on conventional frequencies....much further on Ham. What
would be
the normal expected transmit range on an 800mhz trunked
system/repeater?
Since I can't seem to pull in any strong repeaters, that should tell
me
that
I need a better antenna, an 800mhz specific antenna, or to tune the
discone
somehow. Is my thought process valid? Any ideas?
Harryc
--



Well, just about ANY antenna is better than a discone, but you should
be able to get at least the closer of the two systems with the rubber
duck, let alone an outside antenna. You may be overloading the 95, and
that's why you can't hear anything. Try scanning the 800 PSB freqs with
the duck and see what happens. Maybe the coax on the discone has taken a
dive and hasn't gotten really bad yet, so the higher freqs are the only
ones affected so far.


For a better antenna, check out:

http://users.cis.net/kingpop/Scanner/Scantenna.htm

Can you hear anything on 800? You should be able to hear control
channels buzzing away somewhere, and that's all the 95 needs to trunk
track. My 93 has no problem getting local trunked when I am 15-20 miles
away with a replacement (MFJ dual band short duck) antenna, the original
got tweaked and I tossed it.

BDK






What discone is it, most are the same electrically and only differ in
price and quality of materials, but there are some of the oddball ones
that dont seem to work well on 800. A 5 buck ground plane made from coat
hangers and a "F" connector and hung in my attlc blows the Icom discone
out of the water. 460MHZ signals that are full quieting on the ground
plane are hissy on the discone. 800 is the closest they get, and the GP
still beats it easily.

You still may be overloading the 95, what do you get with the duck? If
you hear them ok with it, I would guess some nearby transmitter is
blasting you. I have an easy test here, any scanner that gets no
intermod in 460 or 851-855 and can hear everything on the scantenna is
pretty good, and not many handhelds can do it, the 93 included (a 95 is
pretty much the same radio, with more channels). There's a local PD
right across the river and it can be heard on FM radios lots of the
time. On high end radios with S-meters I have had, it pegs the meter
with a 4" hunk of wire stuck in the center, and can be clearly heard
without any antenna at all. If a scanner can't hear it at all, it's
really dead. I have had a few that as soon as the antennas (any of them)
are hooked up, they get seriously deaf. My BC9000 XLT gets hash all over
the place when any of three nearby transmitters is keyed up, but it
still hears most everything. My RS Pro 2004 and 2005's are much better.

On almost all my handhelds, except for a couple of the ham HT's, I have
to run a duck on them, or keep the telescoping whip really short to keep
them "clean".

BDK