Originally Posted by
gonzalu
Guys, a little primer on RF. While it is BEST to have a 360 degree unobstructed view of the sky as high as possible, it is not nearly as important as having a receiver and ANY antenna AT ALL :tongue:
I feed the La Guardia Tower for LiveATC.net. You will be very surprised to hear it is using a dipole screw-on antenna on the back of the radio (Radio Shack scanner, old one, crappy one) at a height of 22 stories in Washington Heights, a few miles (about 8 miles?) from LGA tower. Indoors no less, in an OLD building (1920s) with super thick walls.
Anyhow, he will be fine and will get great reception and likely will be more limited by transmission line loss than actual signal sensitivity at the radiator (or in this case the receiver)
Planes in the air transmit with down-facing antennas, semi-directional and pretty high power (sometimes 25 watts) which incredibly, will get you very far.
N2MAV :wink: