Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info

Gene wrote:

Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info

You'll most certainly need (or want) some other sort of antenna other than
the discone to monitor shortwave.

dxAce

I use a discone on my VR-5000 and PCR-1000. They work well for me from 900
down to WWV at 2500.



"Gene" wrote in message
...
Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info

Gene wrote:

Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info


You can use a discone for 30 Mhz and up for sure. the performance below
that falls off very quick. I use my discone with an ICOM R7000.

As for grounding yes you have to ground the anttena. It is for safety as
the lightening may want to flow down your coax lead in no matter what is
struck by the lightening. Lightening goes everywhere when it hits and
into the house via the coax is a good possibliity.

My discone sits on top of 2-10 foot mast sections. The coax is fed to a
gound rod via an anti satic device, then on to the radio. the mast is
bolted to my dack so is easy to take down

You could use the 20 mast as an antenna. run coax to the mast and secure
it to the bottom. You now have a 20 foot vertical antenna that will be
fine on SW.

There is more info about grounding and antennas at the AMANDX site below

--
73 and Best of DX
Shawn Axelrod
VE4DX1SMA

Visit the AMANDX DX site with info for the new or experienced listener:

http://www.angelfire.com/mb/amandx/index.html

REMEMBER ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN HEAR FOREVER

Jim Hackett wrote:

I use a discone on my VR-5000 and PCR-1000. They work well for me from 900
down to WWV at 2500.

I wouldn't disagree that the discone will indeed 'work' down that low, but will
it work well? That's the question.

Heck, a 5' piece of wire will work, but the question remains, will it work
well?

I've never seen a 'discone' that would work well into the shortwave range
unless it was one of the humongous ones such as that used by the FCC at their
monitoring station which used to be located south of me here.

dxAce



"Gene" wrote in message
...
Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info

On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 08:29:47 -0500, The Axelrods
wrote:




Thanks in advance for any info


You can use a discone for 30 Mhz and up for sure. the performance below
that falls off very quick. I use my discone with an ICOM R7000.

As for grounding yes you have to ground the anttena. It is for safety as
the lightening may want to flow down your coax lead in no matter what is
struck by the lightening. Lightening goes everywhere when it hits and
into the house via the coax is a good possibliity.

My discone sits on top of 2-10 foot mast sections. The coax is fed to a
gound rod via an anti satic device, then on to the radio. the mast is
bolted to my dack so is easy to take down

Can you expound a little on this.. "anti static" device? Not quite
sure I know what this one is.


You could use the 20 mast as an antenna. run coax to the mast and secure
it to the bottom. You now have a 20 foot vertical antenna that will be
fine on SW.

Run this one to a ground rod also, as the above?

There is more info about grounding and antennas at the AMANDX site below

Maybe should have gone there before I post this.. Thanks! Gene

You might wan to consider the AOR SA7000 antenna.



http://tinyurl.com/x6to



It's pretty expensive, but it does cover shortwave frequencies as well as
VHF/UHF. It also has the added benefit of being pretty discrete.



"Gene" wrote in message
...

Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info

In article k.net,
says...
I use a discone on my VR-5000 and PCR-1000. They work well for me from 900
down to WWV at 2500.



"Gene" wrote in message
...
Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info




"Works well" is relative. Compared to about any other antenna, a Discone
really is a poor performer at VHF, let alone SW. But, compared to NO
antenna, it works well. A 40 ft piece of wire on the attic floor should,
and almost has to blow it away on SW. On scanner freqs, the simplest
ground plane is amazingly better than a discone.

BDK

In article , says...


Jim Hackett wrote:

I use a discone on my VR-5000 and PCR-1000. They work well for me from 900
down to WWV at 2500.

I wouldn't disagree that the discone will indeed 'work' down that low, but will
it work well? That's the question.

Heck, a 5' piece of wire will work, but the question remains, will it work
well?

I've never seen a 'discone' that would work well into the shortwave range
unless it was one of the humongous ones such as that used by the FCC at their
monitoring station which used to be located south of me here.

dxAce



"Gene" wrote in message
...
Getting ready to purchase a ICOM 8500, and as I live in a community
where a long wire would be out of the question, I have been told that
a discone will work quite well for my monitoring activities, and will
be rather hard for the grumpy neighbors to see, as compared to a beam,
etc. etc.... . Any comments on this? How high should I install it.
Probably cant go over 15 or 20 feet at the most. I intend to use some
type of telescoping mast, so when one of our Florida hurricanes comes,
I can "bring er down"! Since the antenna will be coupled to the mast,
will I still need to ground it? (I know thats probably a really stupid
question, but it seems as if the metal mast would take a lightning
strike (God forbid!) to the ground, rather than into the house..(??)
A neighbor of mine has a little discone up around 15 ft., and uses it
to transmit on the 6 meter (or is it 20 meter) bank. Works quite well,
he says. Thanks in advance for any info


Exactly. I have two of them, used mostly as scanner testing, and backup
antennas in my attic. Both are fed with 9913 coax (I had enough left off
the roll I bought) and the homebrew 2 meter ground plane I made using
RG6 CTV cable, also in the attic beats them both by a wide margin on any
freq I dial up. Some freqs it's slightly better, some other's it's a
huge improvement. When I had the Icom discone at 40ft, and a Ringo
Ranger 2 at the same height, the Ringo killed the discone so badly I
thought there was something wrong with the cable, so I had my tower
monkey switch the coax between them. I was wrong, the discone just plain
sucks. No other way to put it..

BDK

On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 09:20:04 -0500, "mike0219116"
wrote:

You might wan to consider the AOR SA7000 antenna.



http://tinyurl.com/x6to



It's pretty expensive, but it does cover shortwave frequencies as well as
VHF/UHF. It also has the added benefit of being pretty discrete.




Thanks Mike.. The SA7000 looks like it might be a better alternative,
and actually less obtrusive than the discone. The SA7000 on a 20' mast
ought to be a good choice.