Save your money on buying an antenna, you can make a
really good antenna for reception from two pizza tins.
If your main interest is ham radio I would build a replica of ed fong's DBJ-1 j-pole, which has quite a bit of gain on both 2 meters and 70 cm. You can also make a slightly modified version, the dbj-2 which rolls up and which can hang from a hook on your ceiling when you want to use it. You can use the same hook for the planar disk when its in use.
But a few feet of decent coax, with copper braid and center conductor you can solder to. its a good investment. There are virtually no broadband antennas on the market that are worth what is charged for them.
Many scammer antennas are ludicrously overpriced.
A discone is broadband and works but a planar disk or biconical will give you a better radiation pattern out to the horizon. A discone has a skewed pattern that develops most of its gain upward at an angle and for land mobile use that largely wastes it.
For those two ham bands check out the ed fong dualband j-pole. Cant beat it for any price unless you want to spend >$100 on specialized single band antennas (or use a yagi, i.e. beam) .
Which reminds me, you should figure out where the repeaters you want to listen to are, build a simple beam out of coat hanger wire to see if you can get them with a directional antenna.
Directions to make a super cheap 15 minute Yagi are on the same site that the Planar Disk antenna is on.
If you have a $10 radio and $0.025 antenna wire its not worth spending money until you have done the few basic things that are necessary to use an rtlsdr effectively.
Get some decent coax. The wire that comes with those radios is only useful for lower frequencies.
Its a tribute to the value of those devices that it even works at all.
Invest a bit of money in a barrel adaptor so you can use regular coax.
Dont spend more money until you know your QTH has a line of sight path to the repeaters you want and have your ham ticket.
Build your own antennas first to get a better idea of what you need.
You may need a dedicated Yagi - if they are some distance away or behind some obstacles.
Ask your local hams what the popular repeaters in your area are, there are also likely online listings.
There is a free program, "chirp" which can be used to program Baofengs. It allows importation of several frequency lists, those lists are likely a good place to find your local repeaters. I forget where they are.
Also, many of your local hams may not be online except on weekends, evenings and when driving to and from work.
Quote from: brainwash on Yesterday at 16:18:37Thanks for the reply.
I did make a makeshift 1/4 antenna with a length of wire but the reception was only marginally better. I intend to buy the ultra-wideband antenna (forgot the name) which looks like a tripod with many legs, but it's a risk that you get the fake one.
The planes are either on the ground (below LOS) or a lot of times behind a few walls of concrete. Still, even 30km LOS is impressive, with a thermally-insulated window in-between. I don't know what their transmitter power is but I assume 50-150W.
Any specific frequencies I should scan on? I expected at least someone every 15 minutes, at least, should I expect much less than that?