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What's the best way to follow Pierce and Snohomish counties from Renton? I only get Pierce County when we drive down south and sometimes, usually in the summer, I get Snohomish County with crappy reception.

I live in a townhome so I don't think my manager would allow external atennas.

I live in Renton and get Pierce/Tacoma and Snohomish West trunk systems fine on the RS 800 duck antenna. It is a matter of altitude. I live in the Renton Highlands.

I live in Kennydale now and when I lived in Tukwila, I got Pierce county on several occassions.

I've listened to Snoho in the basement of a Seattle building using this.

Well that's not as much fun as using a scanner.

Well with my BC340CRS, I got Kitsap and Thurston counties perfectly.
On a sunny afternoon, Thurston County Sheriff's Department would have perfect audio.

So I guess I'll take my BCD396XT upstaairs one day and wait for it to lock on to the control channel.

If you are running the stock antenna from Uniden - take a good trip to R@tShack for their 800 antenna. I use the SMA adapter to BNC that came with my 396T.

There are any number of "stealth" antenna solutions available, if yu look around. The "ventenna" is (was?) offered for many years as a solution that mounted on top of a roof plumbing vent.

When I was ina townhouse many moons ago, I placed a dual band ham antenna in the attic. It worked pretty well considering the hole we were in, but transmitting on certain VHF freqs would set off the AC powered smoke detectors for several units each direction. A scanner of course would not cause that.

If you can get into your attic you may try placing a larger base style RX antenna in there...

+1 on this antenna.

I gotta bite. I don't have an attaic in my house.
Also, is that antenna like the rubber duck antenna that comes with the BCD396XT? I'm not sure where my SNA thing is.

Same concept, but the one that comes with the 396 is an "all band" antenna. The RS 800 antenna is specifically tuned to the 800 MHz band.
BNC and SMA are just different types of connectors.

Are these antennas on the real radios?

The Radio Shack 800 duck is after market. Probably one of the few RS products that actually works.

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"I was installing un-programmed radios"

Would it still let me receive other bands, or would I be stuck with the 800MHz band?

Depends. if you're urban, it isn't bad for passing strong VHF signals but in the fringes I would say only the strongest out of band repeaters. I'm used to carrying more than one antenna. I really haven't found a broad banded antenna for all bands.

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"I was installing un-programmed radios"

I have three of them they rock.