i agree that the radio shacks poor mans discone is a improvement over most
scanner antennas, however one needs to be aware that the radio shack discone
uses hollow elements , subject to easier breakage than the icom discone.
i just put up a Radio Shack Discone and a channel master 5094. there is very
little difference as one performs better on some freqs than the other, the
rat shack con is omni directional as i believe the 5094 is some what
directional ( just my opinion ) . the discone did receive aircraft ground
allot better than the Channel master. however on FM broadcast it was equal
to the channel Master if not a little worse. these are just some trial test
as i have not gone to great comparisons yet. i am using the discone as a ham
antenna at the moment, but will do more comparison later this week. the
receiver is a Icom PCR-1000.
Just be careful with the rat shack discone as it is fragile.





"asym" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 16:00:21 -0700, Trooperdude
wrote:

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 16:41:27 -0400, "Brent"
wrote:

I have made up my mind to buy this antenna, but I have found a few
different
models and don't know which to get. I am using a BC796D scanner. This
will
be an outside antenna.


Diamond Discone

Minimum of 9913Flex cable for the coax

Get a GOOD quality coax and connectors like 9913Flex
as a minimum, LMR400 is preferable.

I have a Pro-2052 w/ about 70ft of RG58 going up into the attic to hit
an RS discone. Here's what I will say, is that even with the really
crummy cable, reception is much better than it was with the other
antennas I tried, along with their shorter, higher quality cable runs.

These other antennas (not counting the crummy telescopic it came with
of course) are both mobiles. The first was a glass mount that I
bought two of, one for the car and one inside mounted to a little
stand I made. Reception was "ok".

The second is their wideband dual loaded magnetic mount, which was
quite a bit better than the other one, but still not great.

The #1 rule is of course height.. there is no substitute for it. Even
with the 70ft run -- I didn't want to drill holes in my ceiling, so it
goes across the roof to a closet, in through the trapdoor, then into
the middle of the attic -- I pick up much more than I did with the
other antenna. Partly design -- the discone is just better than any
kind of whip, but also because of the height difference of about 10-15
feet (and lack of wiring to interfere).

I can hear the ground control at the local airport now, which I was
never able to pick up before, and that's with an estimated loss of
about 10dB from the RG58.

The better cabling is an option (I'm looking for a good deal on some
9913 myself) but makes much more of a difference at high frequencies
than at lower ones. Even "crappy" RG8 only has a loss of around 5db @
400mhz for a 100ft run. 5db is enough that you'd notice, but it's
about the smallest amount that you *could* notice.

This is all out the window if you ever intend to transmit over that
same antenna. Get the best cabling you can and keep the run as short
as possible.

-Allen