(lousy flagpins) writes:

ive got a bc80xlt with several bands (ham, t band, etc.) that i get
nothing on. im in an urban area so it seems like there ought to be a
lotta stuff around.

right now all i have is a 6 inch flexible antenna like you see on
handheld police radios. do i need another completely differnt antenna
or maybe just a longer version of what ive got.

I have had excellent results using a right angle antenna. drop the rubber ducky I do not recommend the following: open her up and use ether (very cold) and a torch on the black tar to get access to the fm discriminator. I tapped the discriminator and pulled it through a plated through whole. I used a small ferite bead with 2 turns and the scanner is now bad ass. I use it for band searching. This is probably my second favorite scanner. I get some television stations! and and plenty of hams.

The problem as I see it is that the discriminator is encased in plastic making it difficult to ground out noise. the ferrite bead helps tremendously; not sure how but is does. standard amidon #43 material. No need to mess with the IC itself, there is an empty pad and there are several through wholes so you don't need to drill. If you're really interested check discriminator.nl or I'll take some pictures. What a junkie I am...

I use a preamp from tony van roon's website: http://www.tonyvanroon.com/oldwebsit...activant2.html .
I used a Siemens dual gate mosfet (check the data sheets for bf998 SOT143B! not SOT143R!) instead of MFE201. It has dual diode protection and such; it is claimed to work up into 1 gigahertz. Tony had an excellent website. check the active antennas.

Simple answer would be, get a better antenna... any info you get on this scanner that you would like to share would be appreciated....