Red Wave Radio

I have a K-40 CB antenna (approx. 50" or so base loaded whip) on my car (for
the CB obviously !!) and I was wondering whether if I bought an SO-239 to
BNC adapter whether it would be any good connected to my handheld scanner ?
While driving at the moment the handheld scanner is practically useless in
the car, unless I hold it out of the window with one hand !! I would rather
not put another antenna on the car.

Any ideas as to how well it would work ? My main interest is 400MHz and
below (mostly aircraft etc.).

Richard.

This antenna is obviously not "optimized" for those bands but it might
work better than what you've got now.  I had a similar situation and
it worked out well for me.  For the little cost involved, I personally
would give it a try.

On Tue, 23 May 2000 11:03:48 -0400, "Richard Smith"

Quote:

>I have a K-40 CB antenna (approx. 50" or so base loaded whip) on my car (for
>the CB obviously !!) and I was wondering whether if I bought an SO-239 to
>BNC adapter whether it would be any good connected to my handheld scanner ?
>While driving at the moment the handheld scanner is practically useless in
>the car, unless I hold it out of the window with one hand !! I would rather
>not put another antenna on the car.

>Any ideas as to how well it would work ? My main interest is 400MHz and
>below (mostly aircraft etc.).

>Richard.

The loading coil [and maybe capacitor] will limit the antenna to the 11Mtr band.
You might be able to recieve from like 25 to 30MHz.  If you remove thaty matching
network [coil and capacitor], it will work nice for maybe up to around 170MHZ or
so. But it just way to long for 400 [70cM].
A simple approach is to but the Ratshack(R) window mount for your *** duck.
It is a funky shaped bracket that has a BNC female on the outside, with a 6'
(or so) thin [RG-174 come to mind] coax to a male BNC connector.
The loss in such a small coax gets farily high as you go up in frequency,
but for 400 and below it works really good, given that a ducky is never a "gain"
antenna and you will not recieve the really weak signals anyway due to [almost certain]
ignition/CPU/gauge noise.
Good Luck
YMWV

RadShack has a mag mount antenna for scanning that works pretty well.
Kinda cheap, too.

Quote:> I have a K-40 CB antenna (approx. 50" or so base loaded whip) on my car
> (for the CB obviously !!) and I was wondering whether if I bought an
> SO-239 to BNC adapter whether it would be any good connected to my
> handheld scanner ? While driving at the moment the handheld scanner is
> practically useless in the car, unless I hold it out of the window with
> one hand !! I would rather not put another antenna on the car.

> Any ideas as to how well it would work ? My main interest is 400MHz and
> below (mostly aircraft etc.).

> Richard.

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Get your mits on one of those el cheapo mini mag mounts with the BNC
connector. Prune it to about 19" and away you go. Use one myself and it
works quite well. I monitor mainly on VHF and UHF (400-512). Even works
reasonably well on 44MHz.

MC