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I agree with the fellow thats having problems with 800mhz reception using a discone antenna.

Im using a diamond d130j discone plus 60ft of lmr-400 coax here and it will only pull in 2 of our local 800mhz PS trunk towers out of 6 plus or so that are around me... the radioshack ruberduckie performs alot better for some strange reason.
I think the discone overloads the radio on 800mhz , desensitizing radio reception.

an 800mhz yagi antenna is the way to go to narrow in on certain towers instead of a wide band antenna.

xjf79

Discones are awful antennas for 800 MHz work. The reason isn't so much lack of gain, as vulnerability to multipath fading.

Either of the two 900 MHz antennas on Kent Britain, WA5VJB's page will work better than the discone for this application. It may not even be necessary to mount it outside.

Ran the LMR400 today. Just waiting on the antenna. Which of course has been delayed. I'll report back my results.

Ok. So I installed the new antenna today. And the results are [drum roll]..... Well it performs as good if not a bit better than the Radio Shack 800Mhz tuned ducky antenna. So, that is good news.

One odd thing though. The Ebay auction said the antenna model is a "BS800SN-B" 825-866 MHz 4dB. And the sticker on the bag had that model number also. However I cannot find any reference to this model on the Comtelco website or anywhere on the net. They do offer that modem in an -A, -C and -E. The -C says it's for 825-896 Mhz.
http://www.comtelcoantennas.com/bs_800_900_mhz.htm
So I'm bit confused that I cannot find any reference to the model antenna that I have.