153 - Splitting and Sharing Antennas

Splitting and Sharing Antennas

Do you need to split or share the signal from a single antenna to multiple scanners?

In this episode, Phil explains the hardware you need to achieve this setup, how the technology works, and what to look for when purchasing the accessories you need. He also walks through his personal setup.

What You Need To Know

You can use diplexers, duplexers, Triplexers ,and the like to share or split antennas based on frequency A simpler setup would be to split an antenna equally between radios using a multicoupler. A multicoupler can be thought of as a splitter, but the ports are separated so the scanners aren’t able to "talk" to each other. Passive multicouplers are less expensive and have no gain, but introduce loss between the ports. Active multicouplers have to be plugged in and powered, and it mimics connecting directly to an antenna. Active multicouplers are Phil’s recommendation, especially if you plan to do a lot of splitting or daisy-chaining your multicouplers. Don’t use T-connectors because it may cause cross-talk and interference between scanners. When you’re buying a multicoupler, make sure that it passes the frequencies you want to monitor. Also, pay attention to the types of connectors on your multicoupler, and whether it’s a passive or active multicoupler. Phil uses a Stridsberg multicoupler, model MCA208M. Phil also recommends looking at the website Digital Loggers for their 16-port multicoupler.

All session notes with links to the items we talked about an be found on our website at www.scannerschool.com/session153

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