X50 for general rx ?

[gmham]

Have an x50 dual band white stick type aerial here with which is propped up in the corner of the shack along with an oversized length of rg58 coax and is used for general monitoring of the vhf and uhf pmr bands. Appreciate when it comes to vhf and uhf bands a bit more effort has to be put into the antennas when compared to the HF bands etc but just wonder if in the real world would notice much difference to signals if I were to bother putting the antenna on the roof along with using decent low loss coax ?

Also lost the original short mounting pole that came with the x50 which slots into the base covering the pl259 plug at the base. Have a alloy pole here which fits very snugly over the so239 / pl259 plug at the base which would imagine won’t move if placed outside but just wonder what else I could use to secure this antenna to a short length of pole ?

[Andy]

I reckon you'd see a major improvement on signals that are weak at the moment. The extra height and the fact that the antenna would be 'in the clear' would be very beneficial.

[gmham]

Thanks Andy yep will give it a try, for all the size and weight they are. Would imagine using a suitable length of decent quality low loss coax alone will help on the vhf / uhf bands.

[paulears]

I have a White stick on my house, I also have a UHF 453mhz commercial white stick for my repeater. Accidentally swapping the cables one day, it took a while to work out why the range had significantly dropped. The white sticks are very narrow. A bit of gain at 433MHz and quite a loss at 453. 156mHz marine is just about OK, but by 162mhz it's down a lot and at 166, performance is pretty poor. I'm firmly of the opinion that they're rotten things for wide band scanning!

[Andy]

Some 'white stick' antennas are sharply-focussed on the amateur bands, others (I think the x50 is one) seem to work well on the nearby PMR bands. Re the coax, I've always used CT100 satellite coax. It's low loss up to about 2 GHz, flexible and cheap. The only drawback is that it's a 7mm cable, so a bit of imagination is required for the connectors. I tend to fit a suitable satellite F-plug, then use an adaptor to fit my receiver. Or there are now 5mm cables such as Aircell-5 which are fairly low loss available from the usual places.

[gmham]

Cheers Andy great info thanks.