Police Scanner | Scanner Radio | Radio Scanners

External Antennas - Are They Worth The Trouble?

For scanner listeners like me, the answer is a resounding yes! An external antenna can make an absolutely amazing difference in your scanner reception. But, whether or not it is worth going through the trouble of installing an external scanner antenna all depends upon what you want to listen to.

You are less likely to need an external antenna if you live in a heavily-populated urban area and you are only interested in listening to your local emergency personnel, such as the police and fire department. This is because most large cities use repeaters for most of their communications, which re-broadcast all the communications that take place on the system using a powerful transmitter.

Normally you would have virtually no chance of monitoring a cop or firefighter on the other side of town talking on a low-power walkie-talkie unless you had an external antenna mounted in a very elevated location or happened to live on a hill. With a repeater system, that walkie-talkie is received and then re-broadcast by the repeater. Since the repeater is a very expensive piece of radio equipment with an antenna that is usually mounted high atop a hill, building, tower or some other elevated location, it is able to receive weak signals and retransmit them with very high power, making the signals easy to receive.

If all the agencies you wish to monitor are using repeaters that are in your local area, you will probably be able to hear everything you want to hear simply by using the small plug-in type antenna that is usually supplied with the scanner.

If you live in a more rural area or are just interested in listening to more distant signals, an external antenna connected to your scanner will be a great benefit. It will be difficult hearing various units that may be scattered throughout a wide area unless all the services you want to monitor are using repeaters. This is not usually the case, as there is always some agency that is still using simplex communications where each individual unit has only the power of their individual radio to rely upon to transmit their messages. That is the type of situation where an external antenna makes a world of difference.

External antennas can be as simple as mounting one on the roof of your house like a television antenna or erecting a tower that is specially designed for mounting antennas on. The tower solution is usually only for those with a serious scanner habit, as it can involve a lot of work and be quite expensive to install.

Where you live can also have a major effect on your scanner reception. If you happen to live high on a hill, you will have a big advantage over many other scanner listeners and may enjoy excellent reception simply by using the antenna that comes with your scanner. Good scanner reception is all about getting as high as you can. If you live on the upper floors of a residential high-rise building, you will probably enjoy excellent scanner reception without the need for any external antenna as well.

If you are just getting started with scanner listening, your best bet is probably just to get yourself a scanner and try listening for a while with the antenna that is supplied with the unit. You may find that you can hear all that you desire using that set-up. If not, you can add an external antenna which should make a dramatic difference in your reception.

There are a wide variety of external scanner antennas available. Like most anything else, there are bargain models and very expensive ones as well. In most cases your scanner reception will be greatly improved even when adding an inexpensive external antenna mounted on the roof of your house or the balcony of your apartment or condominium if that type of thing is permitted where you live.

For most of my scanner listening I use an external antenna called a discone and are manufactured by a few different companies. They tend to be more expensive than the bargain models, but they cover a very wide range of frequencies and they are also very durable and will last for many years.

I've been listening to scanners for many years and would never even think about scanning without an external antenna. I've had some fairly elaborate antenna set-ups over the years including a few mounted about 70 feet up in the air on top of a couple of tall pine trees! Those worked exceptionally well for me although I have since moved and now just have them mounted on the roof of my house. I am fortunate to live in a pretty elevated location, so my scanner reception is not something I can complain about too much.