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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-11-04)

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Have you heard about those 'wonderful' little devices that you put in line with your fuel system which give you up to 20% better fuel economy with no loss of performance? Despite their claims being absurd and without any scientific backing whatsoever, - the question that springs to my mind is that is they are so good, why has not (even) one car manufacturer fitted them as standard?

A wide band pre-amp does nothing that isn't already done inside your scanner. It's nothing more than a single transistor to add another stage of gain before your front end. It may give you more signal, but it will also give you correspondingly more noise. Your signal to noise ratio will be poorer as the signal has to go through one more stage. And worst of all, it can overload your front end and you may 'discover' a whole bunch of frequencies which aren't actually there at all.

Pre-amps do on occasion have their uses. If you've got a vintage or duff piece of equipment which is deaf, it may help to make it more usable. If you have a large feeder loss, sometimes the only way out is to put a pre-amp at the antenna end to compensate for that loss. If you are doing ATV or moon bounce and you only need to use a spot frequency or very narrow band of frequencies then a tuned pre-amp is often very worthwhile. If an amp is narrowly tuned, it not only has more gain than a wideband pre-amp, but it also has the advantage of cutting down on strong adjacent signals.

As a rule, a base scanner is likely to be more forgiving than a pre-amp. Also, a pre-amp may be of value way out in the sticks, but in a place like central London where strong local signals pour in day and night, it is likely to be the perfect route to overload, intermodulation, distortion aand de-sensitisation.

Generally, your money would be better spent on a better antenna, better (low loss) coax cable or a moresensitive and selective radio.