Yeah, I would have thought that while a properly tuned antenna will help
you, it is nowhere near as critical as if it was hooked up to a transmitter
where a bad SWR can be costly / lead to bad transmission performance.

However because you aren't transmitting, I wouldn't say it is a critical
issue but still an issue that could matter in the longer term.

I've been using poles geared for lower end frequencies and while they do a
great job for those frequencies, even the stock standard antenna that came
with my handheld does a better for the 400MHz+ range that I've been
focussing on in recent weeks. I guess I'm just hooked on the awesome look
of lower frequency antennas!!

However if I was you I'd wait for advice from others before you get the
tinsnips out.

Neil



"Mike Granby" wrote in message
oups.com...

I have an AV-5 airband antenna [1] hooked-up to my scanners, and it
just struck me that (doh!) I didn't tune it before I installed it.
Looking at their docs, I was horrified to see that the supplied length
of the elements is such that it's way off tune. From my math, it'll be
tuned to around 95MHz instead of the 125MHz that would be the rough
center of the airband. How big a deal is this? Do I have to get the
ladder out again? Or will the losses be managable in an rx-only
application?

[1] http://www.rami.com/gaa/antenna-info.cfm?pid=15