Testing Different Aerials For Scanning

Testing out different aerials I've been buying from Aliexpress. They are only cheap, but here are two aerials. One [the black one] came with an SDR dongle I bought many years ago, and the other is a telescopic aerial I bought very recently. I honestly thought the telescopic aerial would beat the little old mini aerial that came with the SDR dongle 10 years ago, but I was wrong. It was actually the other way round.

I did some very accurate but quick comparisons with these two, and the silver telescopic is nowhere near as good. I had SDR running and picking a guy on a HAM frequency talking [somewhere in the 144 - 145Mhz range]. I had a normal scanner sitting listening on the same channel. And what I did was swap between these two aerials using SDR on a desktop computer as the HAM man was chatting away.

The difference was quite noticable. The smaller aerial could just about pick up the voice, although it wasn't clear at all. But the silver telescopic couldn't pick up anything but choppy sounds that were indiscernible. It was fully extracted. And I tried it totally retracted too.

The normal scanner with a stock antenna beat them both by miles. It was the best and most clear at picking up the HAM man in this quick test. I think this may be, in part, due to the materials that each antenna is made from. The normal stock antenna I believe is mostly copper. The other two, especially the telescopic, are cheap metals that don't grab signals as good.

Saying that, the black aerial is still quite good, and I might buy a longer version one which has two curly parts. Where the wire / aerial has been twisted round and round. One curly bit a quarter way up and one around 3 quarters the way up. lol. Not sure how to explain it properly. But yeah, I think that one would be quite good. It comes with a BNC connection.

If I get it soon I might post some sort of comparison. And with it having a BNC connection I'm going to try it on some normal scanners and see how it compares to a normal receivers stock antenna. Stock antennas are usually pretty good, so it could be interesting. Check back in soon.