A baking tray ground plane does make a repeatably measurable difference for me using this indoors. I have proven this to myself on numerous occasions now and seeing as I am the only person I need to prove this too, I am quite ok with that.
It would be interesting (and possibly more relevant) to give S meter readings where possible for this against band specific dipoles.Without comparing it to something else it's not possible to tell if it's any good or not.After all up that high with near perfect all round visibility a coat hanger would work reasonably well.🙂
0:00 - Intro 0:35 - Description 4:08 - CB Channel 40 mid band - 27.405 MHz 4:36 - 4m band simplex - 70.425 MHz FM 5:02 - Air band - 119.400 / 118.625 MHz AM 5:36 - 2m band - 145.525 MHz FM 6:07 - Marine band - 156.700 MHz FM 6:41 - 70cm GB3EG Repeater - 430.9125 MHz FM 7:10 - PMR 446 - 446.00625 MHz FM 7:43 - Wrap-up 8:20 - Outtro Great review, I have a 125 XLT scanner, I may well pick one up. 73's Rob in Switzerland
I have the other magmount version without the radials and cone, it’s surprisingly quite good even indoors. Even better static mobile with it on my van roof. Looking forward to see what yours pulls in 👍🏼
I had their original discone some years back. It worked and matched to a number of bands, but then a 50 ohm resistor would also give a good match. Its amazing the difference that a real antenna made....
Interesting aerial, suitable for the home office so you can listen while you work. It would be interesting to put it on the VNA to see the main areas of resonance.
I've often wondered why the talk so fast. Racing through pertinent information that maybe, just maybe should be said slower and annunciated for clarity.
At a busy airport it saves a lot of time over the course of a whole day.At some very busy American airports the approach controller never lets go of the mic's press-to-talk button so the aircraft have to reply by pressing the squawk ident button.When they tell them to contact the tower it's almost always 'callsign only'.
There's a very limited phraseology (the number of different words and situations, basically, that they discuss), so with practice it's quite simple to understand once your brain is "in the zone". Until then, it does sound very fast and a bit confusing. CAP 417 Radiotelephony Manual is a good read and is available in pdf form free from the CAA website and will demonstrate the limited phraseology set they use. One reason that they sounds annoyed on being told to say again is that they reduce their speech speed very deliberately, which can sound quite intimidating, but is done for a valid reason and is almost never real annoyance. UK aviation comms are quite strict and clipped compared to some other countries, but it works well.
After research and watching reviews, I spent $81.00 on the bundle from Moonraker and the tax, VAT, and shipping were an additional $53.00. I mean FFS, the government charges were almost the same cost as the products. Fk the gubment. Regardless, I paid it and am looking forward to seeing what this antenna and loup can do for a guy who lives in an apartment. Great video. Thank you. Liked and subscribed.🫡
I've had my eye on one of those since about 2013. I've built some of my own mono band antennas. I have one reciever for HF and on for VHF/UHF. I'm not an amateur I have more fun listening.
Thanks for using gb3eg for the 70cms part Lewis your welcome to use it more more often than not someone always listening .. good work on the video's mate... m0oeg
I've had the magmount version for years and it works very well when coupled with a grounded metal base like my radiators. I wasn't thinking about that though when I let my plumber feed my new radiators with PVC pipe and it took a minute until the penny dropped after I saw the huge increase in noise next time I used it. Perhaps this is a good alternative
Brilliant antenna for the price I paid, £19 from Moonraker at the last National Hamfest before the Covid Cancellations, looking forward to this year's show.
Interesting, thanks. Did you try transmitting on it? I have a full discone and it's pretty forgiving and wideband for TX. I think you trade wideband tolerance for transmit performance though.
I have a Discone up on the apex/corner of the house, It's been there for years..just wish there was more digital stuff around me. Being the countryside in Durham and buying an AOR DV 1 was not the best idea!
I got this antenna in my room we are in high ground I put a biscuit tin to act as a ground plain on Airband I get over 100 miles plus from south London and all the local airfields around the south east Essex and Hertfordshire
I have this antenna and you got great results but indoors I haven't had great results at all, a 2m piece of wire with a jack plug on the end out performs it indoors. I've been using it connected to my sdr and connecting the wire to it. Noisy as hell but it massively boosts the signal.my area is not the best, rural area on the coast
@@WX4CB How'd you supply 12V in a bike? Did you have a car battery in a rucksack?🚴 I bought a Cobra 19X from a guy in a multi storey car park at midnight (CB was illegal back then!) and i made a quarter wave dipole up in the loft. But the DV27 on a biscuit tin on the floor in the front room was the more common set up. I was the Hamster 🐹 way before Richard Hammond nicked my handle!
I have the mobile version on a biscuit tin on the window sill but watched this because I wanted to see if would be worth getting the desktop version to put in the loft. As the base is magnetic I might still stand it on a biscuit tin of only to make it more stable.
Check out the ABBREE 518 It has reception down to 20 MHz Unfortunately they don't have an AM mode It transmit is 136 MHz and up I wish it was able to be modified to transmit Down to 20 MHz
I've been looking at these as no matter what I try, SDR,PMR repeater listening ( no licence yet ) ADSB even bought a active mini whip for SWL and a CB I pick up zero :( in South Wales in a valley but my house is above the others round
Hey there. I'm new to this hobby and was thinking about buying this antenna. Do you know what adapter I will need for this to work with my NESDR Mini (TV28T v2) SDR Thank you
Whilst this would be a great approach I feel it my duty to point out that the VNA will not show resonance, only peaks in return loss (so ranges of good match.)
Hi Ringway Manchester. love your videos, I have been trying without luck to purchase 2 x of these antennas & have them shipped to Australia but cannot find anyone in the U.K. that even has them in stock, can you recomend anyone to purchase these from ?. TIA. Rgs Wayne
Hello, which antenna is better to receive the air band, a Dipole type or a ground plane whip? I want to have the most powerful one to receive 118.0 to 136.0 Mhz. I want the better.
I'm going to buy this antenna as I've just been using a 2m split coax, taped onto a broompole in my attic for a few years now. I'm lucky that I'm high up on a hill and have a great line of sight, so it works ok. Question: I've heard people say that using a metal baking tray under such an antenna as a ground helps. But does it make any difference having the baking tray earthed to your house mains? Or is that just a bad idea?
House mains is noisy AF, better off with a direct earth stake into the ground if you want to go that way. Your house earth loop is not a good idea for a groundplane.
I bought this antenna from Moonraker a year ago. (with exerbitant shipping costs). very good quality, careful construction but COMPLETELY MUTE. it is like a Mercedes without engine. I use it as a Christmas tree with some garland.to believe that they never did a test before selling them..heartbreaking....
I bought one of those from Waters and Stanton about twenty years ago (the magnetic desktop version) and maybe I got unlucky but was a waste of money and worse than a standard Uniden rubber duck! Deaf as a post and noisy with it! I await your video with baited breath.
Testing an antenna without swr or swept impedance data (VNA) is kind of like testing a car without a speedometer. If you choose to just compare signal strength, you need an accurate level meter and a dipole on that frequency to compare it to.
Not at all. Actual recordings of the antenna's performance tells the average user all they need to know. Instruments may give you numbers, but *_hearing_* the gain is more important.
@@CadillacDriver Sorry, no. Professionals do it with much more precise methods. I've worked in the field for 40 years. Read any of the IEEE antenna range publications and you'll better understand.
@@chrisscott1547 ummm. You have completely missed my point, and you also have no idea what I know or who I am, so please don't imply I am speaking from a place of no experience here. I've literally laid out why actual real-world testing is better for the "average user" - note those 2 words. Most people who listen to scanners casually will not care for numbers, data and analytics - they want THIS type of video to actually *_hear_* what the antenna is capable of compared to others. It's like telling 99.9% of people all about the inner workings of the I.C.E. or how many lumens a torch has, and what Cree chip is in it.... they don't care. It's the real-world usage they care about because numbers mean absolutely nothing to them. I can sit here and look over my BLF Q8's instruction manuals and marvel at the extreme amount of settings, customisation and tech packed in to it - most people are literally like "click to turn on, click to turn off". They see a torch that produces light (because that's all they need and they don't care because it's not their niche) not a wonder of technological advancement. When you start getting in to technical jargon, people's eyes glaze over unless it's their particular niche hobby. This is obviously your niche and I have owned scanners since 1997 myself, and use PRS radio, so I'm not exactly amateur here - but that doesn't mean I need or want instruments to throw numbers at me when I compare antennas in the field.
@@CadillacDriver While it's true that unlike most viewers, I am an engineer, the trouble with extremely casual comparisons made without controlling as many variables as possible, is that a given set of "results" may have very little to do with the antennas' merit and more to do with other factors. All antenna folks will tell you that impedance matching is assumed to be good, and for wideband operation this can be a real challenge, so before wasting time on any other metric, such as gain and radiation pattern, that is evaluated first. If it's 5:1 or worse vswr over needed bandwidth, that's going to cause significant signal loss and additional line loss. Without these considerations, you might just as well say "I can hear some signals so the antenna must sorta work."
@@chrisscott1547 well naturally if the swr is that high, there is no point using it. The other issue I see with "controlling variables" is that in the real world, that can't be done.... Hence open-air comparisons are, in my eyes, the way to go.
Discones are never any good unless you have a pretty good receiver and use filters like a FM-stop filter. On a wide RX like an SDR almost useless without even more filtering/bandpass. Even up in the microwave bands they get swamped by cell towers in suburbia.
Actually the antenna performance is very disappointing for the frequency range where it is made for. Would have been better if you had checked it with an analyzer or show the performance comparing to simple uhf/vhf amateur band antennas they perform a lot better, also outside the ham bands.
