Thanks for the advice.

The 2m 70cm old antenna someone gave me is a Diamond X200 I believe. It is
about 2.4 meters long with a connection in the middle. It was full of water
and for many years, I took it apart yesterday and emptied the water and
green stuff out and sanded the entier top part of the element and coils. I
will de-oxit it and put it back together and seal it better. I cannot get
the bottom length of antenna out of the fiberglass shell so I will leave
that greenish but I noticed there was continuity between the outside shield
of the S0239 connector and the antenna and not continuity between the center
of the Coax connector and the antenna. I thought the center coax would
connect with the antenna and the shield would connect with the gnd planes.
Is that normal?

From the center of the SO239 connector on the antenna there is no continuity
between anything. Only continuity between the threads of the SO239 and the
antenna length. After I put it all together I will use the AV600 meter to
tests its SWR with the 2m70cm rig to see if it is ok.

That bottom fiberglass piece looks glued in there pretty good I don't want
to break the seal , I think the water might be getting in from that half way
connector.

Can this antenna be modified for broader band scanner use? Most of my
interests in the scanning will be the marine bands (156 ish megs) and VHF
and UHF ham bands anyway.

Thanks gents for the advice,,,

73s





"Ralph Mowery" wrote in message
m...

"Tom" wrote in message
...
Hi

I have the Realistic Programmable scanner with 200 programable channels.
A lot of range there like 6 m, 2 m, 70 cm, marine, etc etc etc, wide
range.

I want to put up an external antenna that I can hook it up to its own BNC
connection for external antenna. I believe the higher the better.

Which is better to run a bare copper wire longest and highest to connect
it to the BNC center? Or should I use coax and splice the center copper
feed to

You will not receive much with a long bare copper wire.

Get some coax, rg8x is good, the rg 6 type is also good and usually cheap.
Don't worry about the 70 ohm impedance of the rg-6 as the impedance is not
going to be 50 ohms anyway over much of the frequecny range. The lmr400
type is beter, but I doubt that you will notice the differance if the
length is around 100 feet or less. Not worth the big price differance for
a scanner in many cases. The only problem with the rg6 may be the
connectors as the shield is usually aluminum or a material that will not
take solder. The crimp connectors are fine.

For the outside antenna, a discone type is often used. Really for a broad
band reception any ground plane or colinear will probably give you good
reception over a wide band. After all, the short antenna that usually
comes with the scanners often pick up many signals.