Moonraker Skyscan Desktop Scanner Antenna

Over many years I have purchased Moonraker Amateur & CB antennas which have performed very well. However, this scanner antenna is virtually useless. As I live on a hill 820' above sea level and the antenna is mounted in the loft, I would expect to get far better results from this unit. Civil Airband reception is reasonable but not exceptional, UHF is mediocre but VHF (including 2 Metres) is very poor. I was actually receiving a 2 metre transmission on a cheap Chinese handheld with a 'rubber duck' antenna, whilst the scanner was receiving no signal whatsoever. A check with an Antenna Analyzer confirmed my suspicions, the antenna is not resonant on the VHF frequencies and was showing a mismatch on the Aircraft and UHF bands. I cannot honestly recommend this antenna.

I've not made any attempts to tune the antenna, and the charts show the antenna results when it was places on a desk next to a window.This antenna is based on the discone antenna design. It is a version of a biconical antenna in which one of the cones is replaced by a disc.A discone is omnidirectional and vertically polarized, with a gain similar to a dipole. It's very wideband, giving a frequency range ratio of up to approximately 10:1. The radiation pattern in the vertical plane is quite narrow, making its sensitivity highest in the direction of the horizon and rather less for signals coming from relatively close by.With this antenna the cone and disc are approximated by 8 aluminium rods for the cone and 4 coils at right angles to each other for the disc. This makes the antenna lighter and reduces wind-loading if mounted outside.The four whip antennas on top of the discone increase the TX and RX below 300MHz, and also improve the reception a little at higher frequencies. The splayed 8 bars pointing mostly down (the cone of the discone part) also behave as a ground-plane for the 4 whip antennas. The downward angle "pulls" reception from above the horizon to a more horizontal direction.This means it does NOT need to be mounted on a ferrite metal base plate to tune the antenna correctly, though the antenna does come with a base magnet to keep it sliding off window-cills, car roofs (when stationary!) and shed roofs.The cable is mil-spec RG58, 4 meters long. It performed great during the "squeeze and wiggle" test where the cable is jiggled, moved to metal objects, wound up and held firmly. Lesser cables show a large change in SWR, but this antenna's reception and transmission profiles remained very stable.The images:The Smith chart runs from 108MHz to 1.2 GHz, showing the frequencies of best performance.The antenna is especially resonant at: 110Mhz, 195MHz, 255 Mhz, and 1.09Ghz, 1.24GHzMore details can be seen in the frequency log-mag, and VSWR charts.At a SWR of 2, 11% of the transmit power is lost, and at a SWR of 3, 25% of the signal is lost.Almost nothing over a SWR of 3 was found, which is 25% lost signal.Below 250MHz is where you start to see a large sinusoidal change in performance.It's not the best antenna given the average SWR across all the frequency band it supports, but it's a good one especially for the price.

I’ve recently got back into radio scanner after a 40 year gap, I’ve purchase a 125xlt which was ok, but the addition of this antenna had changed my entire experience, fabulous!

Prosindoor antenna but has magnetic base for outdoor work ( see Cons)Good Gain - Pulls in signals my other antennae can'tGenerous connection cableeasy assemble/disassembleCons, none, other than-Magnet is for stability ONLY works great on a stationary vehicle but if you drive with it on you'll undoubtedly damage it and probably your vehicle cos the magnet ain't that powerful! (this is not really a con because nowhere does it say mobile antenna

Bought one that was returned, arrived early, as expected the box had a bit of damage, but everything else was present and correct. Took five minutes to set it up, Allen key was also in the packaging for the grub screws which saved me looking for my set.Getting a good 30db signal on some channels where I was only getting 10db, and that’s with it say on the kitchen table, will be putting it up in the attic soon, so hopefully that SNR will increase. Currently listening to Ryanair flights 100miles away.

Wow this little antenna works great, it is very compact but really draws in the signals

Quick and easy to assemble.Mounted on my car at the waterfront, it pulls a great signal on my handheld scanner. Marine bandwidth brilliant. Has at least doubled the reception range of my scanner.Decent length of cable to mount centrally on the car, and reach through the car window to any part of my car inside.Seems a sturdy build. Shame the magnet isn't strong enough for driving, but then it wasn't designed to do that. But would have been a nice option.

Need something that was not to big and works well, and this antenna is brilliant sat on top of my bbq