Whats your best home-built scanner antenna?

[turbosat]

I'm not much of an antenna builder, but I found plans on the web for a simple ground plane, think that's what it's called, last year so I got the stuff together and built one. It was amazing! It looks like the 20dollar job from radioshack (which went up by about 7bucks this spring). Only has some copper wire and pvc, and an SO239 connector to it. I experimented with a couple more , and put them in different locations. Now I have 3 of the things stuck up in the air, one's on top of the house, lol and they work so well I don't want to take them down. Due to all the big cedar trees close by, that I can't cut, various directions are blocked for one or the other, so I just switch them out every few days to see what I get a stronger signal on. I listen to the aircraft a lot, and I've really gotten my money's worth on this little experiment. I'll try to post a picture of one of them soon,

 

[Comptech]

Well I have not tried it yet,but I have an assortment of different frequency handheld antennas and a 8 foot birdview sitting idle.I am going to remove the feed and and place a antenna there and see what happens.Don't worry though I am not going to harm the BV in anyway!

 

[GI_Joe]

I tried the ground plane for VHF a few years back. It worked great. I used a flat metal electrical cover ~4 inch square. SO-239 connector in the center and ground radials on each corner. Wind got ahold of a tree limb and took it out..

I also built ( and then took apart) a 3 element VHF yagi. I used only the Driven element and the Reflector... Worked great poor directivity, but I was not after than anyway - hence taking it apart to use as a poor mans OMNI..

 

[turbosat]

I built one of those also, the 3 element job, cut it for aircraft freq, works really well. Still can't hear the air traffic control tower though, except on days of good skip. If I could get my tower up by a couple more sections, I think I could get them, only up about 25' right now. That thing will still bring in the weather radio stations about 70 miles away though, even though it was cut for 128mhz, lol.

 

[GI_Joe]

I think the reason they work so well is because of their "high" takeoff angle - being that they are Unity Gain - they offer a high vertical beamwidth as compaired to a "gain" antenna where this beamwidth would be quite narrow. This really helps out to the horzon and beyond...