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possible system upgrades needed.

Grogan

Grogan

W9WDX Amateur Radio Club Member
Oct 1, 2011
1,133
343
93
Southern New Jersey
Yesterday I was on the radio at night and things were quieting down a little. My neighbor down the street raised his antenna to 50 ft at the base of a maco V-5000 not sure what coax he has. He was talking local to another friend who I could hear fine. And then he talked to 2 other people he could hear fine and gave them good signal reports. I could not hear a word.
So here we go possible system up grade.
My antenna is 32 feet to the base IMax2000 RG-58 coax 100 ft.
Going higher is not going to be easy I would need a tower and possible location change to another area on the property.
Getting better coax and if needed changing the antenna is an option. is going to a aluminum antenna going to be better It would be vertical. Maco,Siro etc
and how much would it help if any 10% 20%???
Coax change to ??? what coax and what percentage will it help.
I seem to have no problem with match or skip contacts with low power 100 watts etc. Just would like to hear a little a little better and a little further on quiet nights without putting up a 50' tower. Thanks for your input guys!
 

There's a CB'er 6 miles from me. He's got a General Lee and a Maco 3 linear hooked up to a Maco V58 70' up a pine tree and uses about 100' of RG8X coax. By comparison I use my 959 through a MFJ-971 QRP antenna tuner through a MFJ-915 RF choke and have 110' of RG8X coax hooked up to a 102" SS whip 37' at the base. The other guy hears and talks to people I can't even hear. I've heard that the Maco's can edge out some base antennas in being able to hear better. I may be wrong. Your friend does have a height advantage though.


P.S. the RG8X that I use has a 2 db loss at 100 ft of length.
 
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Coax loss can be a factor if the signal isn't making it to your radio, this link may be of some help to you.
Coaxial Cable Attenuation Chart

Also, it is of some value to chase RF noise. If you can quiet your station, you will be able to hear more people. For example at my place the fish tank air pump was quite noisy on the radio, simply unplugging it while I am talking helps quite a bit.
 
CowboyCody said:
Coax loss can be a factor if the signal isn't making it to your radio, this link may be of some help to you.
Coaxial Cable Attenuation Chart

Also, it is of some value to chase RF noise. If you can quiet your station, you will be able to hear more people. For example at my place the fish tank air pump was quite noisy on the radio, simply unplugging it while I am talking helps quite a bit.
Click to expand...

I was almost going to post that link. It sucks to have my set up only keying 4 watts :eek:
Lowering the noise floor is a high priority with me.
 
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You're basicly already in the same wavelength (height) His ant is a tad more superior to your's, in the rx area that is. Look at his ground plane, not only excellent for recieve but great for birds to sit on and poop all over your house, lol. Before spending $150 on a new ant, just to hear mud-ducks, install a Schottky diode recieve kit for $7 ?
 
Coax charts always confuse me If I need 100' whats the way to go. I have the standard whats Better and best should I get LMR400 or RG213 and what about jumpers etc I need the audio book coax for dummies:mad:
 
You will have some losses with a long piece of coax; but that does not mean that it would have so much as to make the other stations undetectable. Even if the coax length used was 300 ft it would still work. Coax over 100 ft of length losses also depends on the quality of the coax. Quality coax at 100 ft may have a loss of less than 3db; which is only 1/2 of one S-unit. A poor quality coax at 100 ft will double that figure. Not enough to wipe a signal out unless it is very weak to begin with.

Doubt very much if that is the problem.
If you are using Radio Shack coax; then throw it away and get some real coax - lol!

I suspect other reasons as to why you can't hear what he does. Location makes a difference; perhaps you might change the antenna's location and see. Height above ground also makes a difference too. There may be some object blocking ('hill side') or even a bad angle relative to your location that doesn't allow you to hear.
 
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I don't think you would be gaining all that much by changing coax. At HF (rather than VHF/UHF) there would have to be quite a large change in attenuation before you'd ever notice the difference. I don't remember the differences in losses between the various types of coax but I don't remember there being close to 3 dB of difference. That's the ball-park difference that would have to be present for any differences to be heard by the average user at HF. That's the -difference- in attenuation, not total attenuation...
- 'Doc
 
I think I might leave well enough alone. The problem may be just the height of the antenna. I don't want to go directional with the antenna.But I suppose that may be an option.
 
the point made was how come he couldn't hear what the other guy was hearing. all OTHER things being RELATIVELY equal, station 'a' having a 'fine business' copy & 'neighbor' at station 'b' having 'no' copy, might only be partially attributed to antenna system. my well massaged grant xl, in my mobile with a predator 10k parked on the beach regularly 'out-heard' my friends rci2995 with an a99 at 50+ feet to the feed. i proved the fact many times over-he & others witnessed it all. why? my 'slightly' modified xl was the key. his 2995, while showing little if any 'noise level' from its 'white noise', really had so much 'white noise', it obscured the audio of all but 'relatively' loud signals. heck, even at my own base, there's been times i've switched receive from one of my HF radios to either an xl or an ar3500 because in truth, especially on AM, the cb's receive was BETTER. even on SSB, the 'cb's' received better then many earlier vintage HF rigs.
yea, there's a lot of antenna-related reasons why 1 station may 'hear' far better then another, but you cannot forget to take the radio into account as well.
 
there's a lot of antenna-related reasons why 1 station may 'hear' far better then another, but you cannot forget to take the radio into account as well.
Click to expand...
Probably the biggest of all reasons mentioned here is the radio. All I have is practical knoledge here, but I saw that it's mostly in the radio when I replaced my Uniden 980 with the RCI-2985dx. Sure, much different quality radios, but even so, the difference in RX was just shocking.

Nothing else changed, just the radios and I immediately was hearing stations from even around my own town that I was "positive" just did not exist. Up to that point, I had heard a toal of three locals and only because one of them had a big amp on his. I had about given up, being convinced it was my location and because I was using a horizontal dipole. Not so. Swap radios and I was hearing all kinds of new locals, and even the truckers on I-90 10 miles north of my location, to say nothing of the wide world of DX that opened up.

Just my 2 cents.
 
I didnt think a coax issue either, i said his antenna is better than yours, his is alum. yours is Fiberglass (am i the only one that read that) lol. I have 15 yr old RG8X, thin and grey kind only 50 ft, that i will still keep when i upgrade to a better antenna. I recently installed a $7 2SC2999 diode & trans recieve kit in my 959, huge difference......i can hear ppl that i never could before, amazing mod.
 

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