Help me improve the reception of pro-2004 scanner (900 MHz range)

I would appreciate it if someone could help me with increasing the reception of a pro-2004 scanner in the 900MHz range.
A home made antenna idea would be perfect.

Thanks

Do you want a directional gain antenna or an omni directional ?
how far away are the transmitters on 900MHz that you want to receive ?

They are a great old scanner, still have one myself, its the second one I have
owned. One antenna that works reasonably well on scanners is the discone, get one that goes to 1.3GHz

dont know what a discone is ? have a look here .....
http://www.radiospecialists.com.au/a...20scanners.htm

they have a couple of styles... dont know what country you are in ?
look for some one in your country selling that style :)

Dave
VK2TDN

You can use a simple 900MHz LNA just after your external antenna. This will compensate for any NF degradation due to cable loss, which at this frequency could be significant.
Here is an example using a cheap transistor from NXP:
http://www.nxp.com/documents/applica...G480W_900M.pdf

Thank you sirs.

Added after 7 minutes:

davenn

I would like an omni directional for a mile or 2 reception.
I live in Canada.
What type of coax do you use for the pro-2004 antenna?

Thanks

At 900MHz use something respectable specially if you cable run from antenna to receiver is over ~ 10metres. less than 10 metres you could get away with RG8.
I would go with something like LRM400 (CFD400) quoted at 0.128dB / m loss

its 1/2 inch coax ie. same size as RG8 but lower loss. I use it for all runs up to 15m from 144MHz to 1296MHz. Any longer run or higher freq and I will use LDF4-50 or LDF5-50. But that stuff is an overkill for a scanner :)

Dave

Thanks again.
I would like to have vfone's simple 900MHz LNA
and your (Dave) coax, but the problem I have with me living out in the middle of nowhere is get the components / coax.
I have to find where to order these things.
Your ideas sound good to me and I will see what I can come up with.

Thanks again