Lately I've been using this little "high gain" antenna that my company
uses in poor reception areas to boost the signal strength of these
little cellular data transmitters we use in our business.

It's about a foot tall with a little coily section, and a magnetic
base. Probably your typical antenna for 800 Mhz.. works great.


A couple of days ago, I bought a Scantenna and I mounted it up on a
homemade mast. Here's a directory of pics I took while building it
all:

http://www.faradic.net/~sphynx/antenna

My little omni-directional 800 Mhz antenna is near the top of my roof
(not in the pictures).

The antenna you see in the pictures is probably 6ft below the highest
peak of my roof. I used every bit of the 50ft. of RG6U coax that came
with the Scantenna and only have the F-to-BNC adapter in-line.

With the Scantenna, the lower band reception seems to be much improved
over the smaller antenna I had been using before, but the reception is
the 800 - 900 Mhz range seems to be a little worse.

Now, I know that the case may be that the little specialty antenna I
have (made special for +3dB gain in 800Mhz or whatever) will always
out-perform the Scantenna, but I was just curious if this is indeed
the case.

Are there any improvements I can make in my design? I was thinking of
elevating it another 6ft or so, but I'm forced to wonder if that would
really be of any significant benefit.

Reception on most other bands seems crystal clear, and I've never seen
my scanner's S-meter register so many darned bars!

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!