Antenna Adventures

I'm mid-way through building a new antenna setup in the backyard.  Note my Comet GP-1, and I used some EMT thinwall conduit to build outriggers to mount my Tram discone antenna for scanning, and on the other side is my Flight Aware 1090 MHz ADS-B antenna for gathering info on aircraft in flight within about 50 NM of my QTH.  Look at that!  I'm using ham radio slang!!
 
 
The only issue I'm having is that the Tram discone sorta sucks.  So much so that I bought a new discone from Diamond Antenna from HRO yesterday, and it arrived tonight.  I wasn't going to buy anything until I finished doing my income taxes, and that happened around 5:30pm tonight, and the new antenna arrived at 7pm, so I guess I didn't break my own rule!  😐
 
Why did I buy a new discone?  Well, I love listening to radio comms, and to be honest, that Tram sucks.  I dialed up 119.000MHz on my Yaesu 991, and was listening to a few aircraft talking to the tower at KAUS - Austin Bergstrom International Airport - and it was crystal clear.  I turned on my Bearcat scanner, and the same frequency was scratchy and had hiss all over it.  I realized that you cannot cheap out on antennas EVER.
 
This weekend aka tomorrow, if it stops raining long enough, I'm going to head out and drop the segments of the push up pole and remove the entire antenna assembly.  After disassembling the whole thing, I'm going to lay it out on a table and rebuild it so that it's flat and square, unlike how it currently exists.  It makes me nuts.   

I did catch a couple of serious calls on the Austin Fire channels - water rescue calls downtown Austin, and a 2 alarm call for an apartment fire where I bet 20 units were dispatched from several battalions.  It was like listening to the old show Emergency on TV.

 

Location: Pflugerville, TX 78660, USA

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