"Jackie" wrote:

I'm about to get a Radio Shack Pro-95
scanner for Christmas. I live in an apartment,
so an outdoor antenna is out of the question.
I do have a second-floor balcony, but
unfortunately, my apartment faces the landlord's,
so ANY antenna out there would be called
into question. I am handy with antennas, and have
built several for my various ham transceivers in the
past. My main question, though, is what *indoor*
antennas have you Pro-95 users successfully used
to get better reception on your scanners? (snip)


I've had great success, and fun, using simple end-fed wire antennas. I've
tried a lot of commercial antennas over the years, with very mixed results.
In frustration, I decided to try it myself. My first homebuilt indoor wire
antenna was a simple piece of thin wire with one end stuffed into the center
socket of the BNC connector on the scanner. This worked surprisingly well.
My current indoor antenna is a simple connector with a short piece of thin
(RG-174U) coax ran to a nearby window (three feet from the desk) with
various length wires (each cut to a desired frequency) soldered to the end
of the coax. This antenna has worked fairly well, perhaps better than some
of the commercial antennas I've used (is also well hidden behind the window
blinds and certainly works better than the standard rubber antenna included
with most scanners).


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/