Railfan Technology > Older Bearcat scanner question

Does replacing the original rubber antenna with a telescoping antenna (approx. 6 ft long) help to pick up distant rail crew broadcasts? I am new to this hobby! Thanks.

Posted from iPhone

Yes, proven many times. The 'well known' antenna lengths are 1/4 wave near 18 inches and 5/8 wave at 46 inches.  Rubber ducks have many compromises but are great to get into the ball park. The telescoping antenna is also somewhat fragile.

What about to look for a calculator but found a website online calculator instead:

http://www.csgnetwork.com/freqwavelengthcalc.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/19 14:44 by TCnR.

A lot of the older Bearcat scanner models were pretty "deaf" radios with equally poor selectivity.  Adding a better antenna might improve their reception of weak signals marginally, but such antennas also can introduce more spurious signals into the radio that it is not selective enough to block.  As I've posted many times before, if you put a good antenna on a relatively poor-performing radio, you'll still have a poor performing radio.

If it's a BearCat 100XT or 200XT they work pretty good in out of town places where there is not a bunch of Public Service and pagers going on. They have pretty good sensitivity but have fairly wide front end which picks up spurious signals and such. Staying out of the techy stuff they work well out of town, I bought a new battery off of Amazon for mine and make use of the three band reception. The audio is pretty weak though.

If the spurious noises are a problem, yep, time for a new radio which is probably 200 bucks and a lot of shopping.

On my ham radios and scanners I have Diamond RH77CA which is a BNC connector.
It is also avilable with a screw on connector. Be using them for years  with no problems.
.....................Swede...................NA7SL....................Albony,OR.........................................

Thanks for the helpful replies! I should have mentioned that my Bearcat is a model BC200XLT. I have ordered a Diamond RH77CA as well as the telescoping antenna mentioned in my first post.

At present, our rail fanning is confined to the Folkston Funnel which provides a continuous scanner broadcast. I realized that I might have a problem when I discovered that my Bearcat was not picking up most of the radio traffic that could be heard from the Folkston scanner broadcast.

Posted from iPhone

Another way to guage how a radio is doing (aka general health) is to check the Weather broadcast every so often, noting clarity or number of Wx broadcast channels you can hear. It's also a good way to compare antennas, one antenna may pick up more weather broadcasts or have a stronger signal compared to a noisy signal from another antenna. It's imperical but much of the hobby is.

As noted in other posts the 200xlt is an older design and is susceptible to intermods and lower audio, also has a poor display and funky keys, but at this point it's paid off so enjoy.