High gain base station antenna recommendations?

[TomCat4680]

Tom,
    You are trying to squeeze out the maximum signal strength at your location, so the lower loss in your cable, the better.
LMR-240 is equivalent to "Mini RG/8" and has higher loss than LMR-400 or RG-8.  Be careful where you buy the RG/8. Some sources sell inferior cable.  LMR-400 is much higher quality cable and costs a little more, but may be worth the price in your situation.
     The Pro-106 manual was merely suggesting that you can "get away with" smaller cable if your length is less than 100', but if you are  seeking max performance, stay with the lower loss cable.
    I ran across this thread from a few years ago which has lots of good info from Dave on antennas.
http://www.liveatc.net/forums/listener-forum/airband-yagi-antenna-designs/

Thanks for the tips. I need to quit trusting Radio Shack.

[Squawk 7700]

Aside from using an efficient antenna and low loss cable, the single item that most improved reception like night and day was this filter. http://www.scannermaster.com/HPN_30118_Combined_Notch_Filter_p/24-531024.htm

My receivers are in the San Francisco Bay Area and there is heavy RF everywhere. This filter really improved my reception amazingly on the airband frequencies.

Hope we can all help out? 

[Solent Radar]

Newbie alert ! Hi everyone from southern UK

As stated, filters in the fed line can remove FM radio hash and pager interference .

I use an FM bandpass filter to remove the effects of an FM broadcast transmitter 1 mile away line of sight, and a fixed notch filter plus variable notch filter to remove 4 pager transmitters 1mile away line of sight . Both transmissions would mix together to cause de-sencing of my RX. All of the filters were placed antenna end , then fed into low noise amplifiers to boost the signal down the feeder cable.

Remember, an amplifier at the receiver end , may not work as well as if placed at the antenna end.

[Casper87]

Mr Radar,

You seem to know your tech 

Close to enough to HI to pick up both Solent & Southampton Radar clearly?

C

[Solent Radar]

No not close enough to HI (oops , busted )

2 ways from from the following; HH, HA, DM Radar, DY Radar, plus the usual London Control feeds and and Brest Control (yet to determine transmitter location of the latter).

To clarify the filter makes used in my above post (and to avoid an off topic happening ).

Par Notch filters 3 off . Various spot frequencies in the 153 MHz pager TX range.

SSE (Solid State Electronics) UK VHF Airband Band Pass filter - stops local FM Broadcast radio.

SSE (Solid State Electronics) Variable notch filter.