On Fri, 28 Oct 2005 14:30:45 -0400, Scott wrote:

What could I expect from an outdoor Antenna? I have nothing to attach
an antenna to on my roof. I'm newbie at this, and was curious as to
how hard it would be to install this

Just use a 1/4 wave VHF whip (unity gain on VHF, 1/2 wave gain on
UHF) and some decent quality RG6X quad shield satellite cable. Put
the whole thing on a short mast on your roof, use an "F to PL259"
adapter on the antenna end, and an "F to BNC" adapter on the scanner
end inside.

Should give you PLENTY of improved performance over a duck.

Discones are very low gain and wide band. They also bring in a LOT of
unwanted interference with intermod/etc.

You'll do fine with a VHF 1/4 wave as a base station antenna for
scanner use.

The impedence mis-match of the cable won't make a whole lot of
difference to the scanner.

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 14:30:00 -0800, Limited Viability
said in rec.radio.scanner:

Just use a 1/4 wave VHF whip (unity gain on VHF, 1/2 wave gain on
UHF)

Minor point - 1/4 wavelength at 150 MHz is 3/4 wavelength at 450 MHz.

Discones are very low gain and wide band. They also bring in a LOT of
unwanted interference with intermod/etc.

Being broadband, they bring in signals that may cause intermod, but
that can't "bring in intermod".

You'll do fine with a VHF 1/4 wave as a base station antenna for
scanner use.

Better than with a discone, but not for more than 2 bands - 150 and
450 - or 1 band of his choice.

The impedence mis-match of the cable won't make a whole lot of
difference to the scanner.

It won't make any difference to the scanner - the load doesn't care
about impedance mismatch.