Discone Antenna

If i use something like a ScanKing Royal Discone Base Antenna to transmit will it actually be any good ?

Deoends on the type of Discone! Some are reasonant for transmit on 2m & 70cm, but watch your power output!

All the usual factors come into play...... Lossages in coax (and length), SWR, etc..... but also consider that the radiated pattern will not be truely omnidirectional due to the way they are constructed.

In conclusion, they may be of use to you in the right circumstances, but you would be better getting a dual or tri-band colinear for the bands you require!

Good Luck..... And Welcome to the Hobby!

2006-07-08 01:10:29 by fedup2006

This antenna is designed to be quot;cheapquot; : ) I have a scanner and it works great with it, but thats not all I also plugged it into my ...

I bought a discone on ebay (groan) some time back and mounted it on my chimney to use with my radio scanner (0-1900 Mhz). It is useless. A friend of mine who is a ham looked at it and said that the length of the rods are all wrong and he has never seen a discone that looks like that! It has one rod out of the top, eight equally spaced horizontal rods and eight equally spaced rods at about 45 degrees downwards. The boss that the rods screw into is genuine as i remember it even had the company name on it. We think the last owner used a genuine boss but threaded his own rods and made them all the wrong length. The antenna is very difficult to get to ( as it is now above a conservatory) so a friend with access equipment is going to help me change the length of the rods but i need to do it all in one day.
My question is this-What lengths should the rods be? They are very approximately 800mm long ( i am guessing from looking from the ground!). The boss and the threaded rods are all stainless steel.
Any help would be very much appreciated as i am new to all this, well out of my depth and cant really afford to buy a new discone. If the rods need to be lengthened then that is not a problem as i can weld stainless steel well.
Many thanks

Discone antennas never have been known to be the greatest for picking up weak or distant signals. Their only advantage is that they are very broadband. Their "gain" is basically unity which is not great. It is basically a trade-off between bandwidth and gain.

What is your primary band of interest? If it is lower (under 150 mhz) then the rods need to be longer (probably what you have). If you are scanning a lot of 800 Mhz like many do now, those rods could be a lot shorter. You might even consider getting an antenna tuned for those higher frequencies. There are online antenna length calculators out there.

2009-01-06 03:02:11 by caw

Does your Discone make a continuous high-pitched humming sound in the wind? Mine is mounted on a 20 ft pole, and I'm not sure if it's the wind blowing through the pole, or if it's the Discone itself doing it.

We're trying to narrow it down, Do you know if Discones are prone to do this?

We just installed a Diamond Discone, and mine is so loud, I can hear it all through the house, and I'm afraid it might bother the neighbors. The harder the wind blows, the louder it gets.

Wow - a woman with a discone antenna! I thought those were just for nerdy guys like me.

Anyway, my only suggestion would be to put it on a lower pole because you can't really change the antenna. As long as it is above your roof line, your performance should be pretty good. The pole itself may be resonating along with the antenna - a shorter pole may fix that.

2009-02-06 11:34:14 by micki

I have a scanner discone type radio antenna i want to install and to blend in with the surroundings i was going to paint it ! if i use lead free paint will it be ok ?

should be fine

2006-07-18 06:03:37 by fedup2006

I'm looking to buy antenna for my digital scanner to try to pick up more frequencies and hopefuly make weaker ones come in stronger.

I've narrowed it down to two, (Discone antennas), the one with higher gain (5.12 dBi) has fewer arms/points (12) coming out of it, and is a shorter antenna.

But the lower gain (2 dB nominal) actually has more arms/points (16) on it and is 2 feet taller.

I live in a small town and am in a mobile home park, the 2 closest big cities are 30 and 65 miles away.

Would it possibly be better to go with a taller antenna or a shorter antenna w/ higher gain? I have a 15 ft post to put it on.

(The higher gain (shorter) one is made by Comet, and the lower gain (taller) one, is made by Diamond, if "name" brands mean anything-I dunno :)

I am in a wheelchair from MS and am at home 24/7 and so listening to my scanner kindof helps me feel more in touch with the outside world. I'd just like to listen to something other than dogcatchers and the occasional cow getting out-LOL

I have a broken small antenna on it now and occasionally pick up bigger cities when it's snowing out and the clouds are low, so I know I'm getting the signal, I just need to draw it in.



Any suggestions?

the difference is 5.12–2 = 3.12 dB
In power, that is about twice as much power picked up.

I'd go with the higher gain antenna, and mount it as high as possible. Is there a reason why the higher gain antenna can't be mounted as high as the other one?

"I know I'm getting the signal" NO, you are not getting the signal. The clouds and/or the snow caused reflections, and at that time, you did get a signal. When the conditions are not optimal, the signal is not there!

You can't "draw in" a non-existant signal.

2008-12-24 10:48:14 by micki