Hey all, I am getting my old man a scanner for christmas, and plan to pre-program it for all sorts of frequencies.

My concern is he won't be able to hear some of the more interesting stuff with the built in antenna, and so I am on the hunt for a simple but effective recieving antenna I can put on his house eve.

I dabble with radios but am very much a beginner with a simple tech license, so all input is very appreciated.

What frequency bands are needed?

What kind of range/performance is needed?

Discone antenna. Example. [/mic drop]

This.

A discone is great but offers no gain but very wide banded. If you're only gonna be scanning the local 800 pub safety system then a 800 antenna would be best. All just depends on your needs.

Sorry should have had that to begin with, it receives per the description: AM Broadcast (530-1700 KHz) (25-54 MHz) FM Broadcast (88-108 MHz) (108-174 MHz) (225-380 MHz) (406-512 MHz).

Would like to get about 30 miles.

A discone would prolly work fine for you. Especially if you can get some decent height above ground.

Noted, would have to see how much that would irk my mother being bolted to her house.

Just say "hey, it's not like I'm gonna put up something like this."

Another vote for discone here.

And I'm going to be pendantic because of something I learned from experience lately: discones are a gain antenna.

The pattern is donut, not a sphere, and as a result they're not isotropic radiators (the definitive 0 gain antenna.)

Gain is typically 2dBi.

I discovered this when I was moving and was puzzled that my discone was getting virtually identical performance to my GP-1 on 2 meters. The reason for that is the GP-1 is a 3 dBi antenna on 2 meters, so it was only 1 dB difference.

For the OP, the advantage of the discone is that it's broadband and mostly omnidirectional (it doesn't do great with signals directly overhead.) So you can get VHF, UHF and 800 MHz bands all with one antenna. It's what I use to feed my SDS200, BCD996P2 and BCD996T scanners (all at the same time via a splitter.)

They also tend to be fairly rugged as far as wind goes.

ETA: Discones usually have a range of 10, normall 100MHz-1GHz. Diamond and tram both have versions with a loaded whip that gives 30-100MHz coverage. If you care about sub-100Mhz signals Bottom of FM band and then CB, 46-49MHz ISM, 6 meters, VHF lo, then get the whip version,

For AM broadcase band you'll need a different antenna, if any.

It's not so much what it can receive as what you're actually using it for.

A discone is fine and an easy button for broadband performance albeit low gain. Just that if you only needed VHF for example, you could DIY a little ground plane for $5 instead of buying a ~$75 discone. Or buy a higher gain VHF or VHF/UHF antenna.

If you're really masochistic you can DIY a discone but it's kind of a PITA to figure out how to put them together mechanically for outdoor use. I came up with an easy way to build one for attic install which works great, but it wouldn't be suitable for outdoor use.

If you actually need low band reception a discone will be a poor performer unless you get one with or add on the top whip element. The low frequency limit of a discone is the cone elements being 1/4 wavelength, and commercial ones that you buy generally will have a low frequency limit of the 2m amateur band.

I will need to be able to pick up at least his favorite FM radio stations.  Come to think of it he does have an AM station he likes too.

I'd get the whip version on the discone then.

For AM, you can see how it goes. Many radios include a internal bar antenna, and not many scanners have AM broadcast coverage -- super high end scanners like the SDS200 often have a lower limit of 25 MHz, so you may need to just get a quality table radio with AM.

You wouldn't want to transmit in the FM broadcast band on a regular discone but it will receive ok. I would only spring for the extra whip if you need low band. FWIW you can generally add the whip later on, it's generally just a cheapie loaded CB antenna that goes into a 3/8 thread on the top of the disk center hub.

If you want AM broadcast reception  you'll need something else entirely.

I've got a BCD536HP scanner. Would this Discone be ideal for this scanner? Our county went to an all digital system
I used to be able to listen to everything with my wouxons and didn't lose a single transmission. With this new system and this BCD536HP scanner, it's hit or miss and rarely pick up the transmission from the cops back to Central dispatch. Any help would be much appreciated.
Sorry if I hijacked your thread, if needed, I can start my own thread.

Respectfully,
Doc

No need to apologize, I am here to learn anything I can.  That BCD536HP appears to be quite the beast.

Yes.

Sounds like it's a simulcast system and scanners are known for having a hard time listening to them. If you're only listening to the local PD/fire/SO or whatever try limiting the sites it's monitoring. Once you figure out what's local to you that carry those talk groups then you'll snag more traffic.

Thank-you guys for the info.  The upgraded antenna and tuning out unneeded frequencies hopefully gets me to where I need to be.
Now to figure out how to get rid of the unneeded frequencies.