Roof Mounted Radio Antenna

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amessmann
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Location: East Lansing, MI

Roof Mounted Radio Antenna

Unread post by amessmann »

Hello everyone. This morning from downtown Brighton, MI I was able to clearly pickup Salem, MI and every signal and DD in between, this, using my Baofeng radio and Nagoya NA-771 antenna. From my house, about a mile southwest of downtown, I can barely hear them call the local signals.

I have gotten the same results with three different antennae that I've tried, and height, atmospheric conditions, and scanner used don't seem to matter. I have gotten slightly better results from keeping an antenna taped to my attic window (30' off the ground) but again height doesn't seem to contribute much. It could be the local forestry, which downtown Brighton has little of but the area around my house is full of, but in certain areas about 1/4 a mile from my house and surrounded by forests I've heard South Lyon. Putting the antenna in my attic sets it about 10' lower than the local tree line.

Long story short, at this point I'd like to mount an antenna to my roof. Of course antenna grounding, etc, is a major concern and I don't know the slightest about that. I was wondering if anyone had any helpful information regarding proper radio and antenna setups. I was planning to use a Diamond X50A as I've heard a lot of people use that, if anyone has other suggestions I'm open to them as well.

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~Z~
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Re: Roof Mounted Radio Antenna

Unread post by ~Z~ »

If you are southwest of downtown Brighton, depending on where you live, there's quite numerous valleys and ridges in that area per this map: http://www.dnr.state.mi.us/spatialdatal ... IGHTON.pdf
That could at least explain why it's better from downtown than at your home.

I used to use a Diamond X50A antenna at home mounted to a pole on my deck that slightly reached above my roof line, but didn't use any grounding. Surrounding trees were higher so took that risk. Antenna and scanner were donated to our super scanner manager to get repurposed/sold as it made more sense to run an antenna feed off of a approx 500' tall tower than from home.
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