The left-hand picture shows the two Radio Shack PRO-433 and four PRO-2055 scanners that I'm using as receivers. They are not the highest quality radios out there, but they do a good enough job and are more economical than the Motorola 2-way mobiles that I considered using.

 

The scanners are fed from an RT-C160A base station antenna purchased from Scanner-Master, and mounted using Radio Shack hardware, as shown in the right-hand picture. The signal enters the basement, and passes through a PAR VHF-AM notch filter to prevent the receivers being overloaded by nearby broadcast stations. It is then boosted by a WC-1235 wide-band preamplifier, before being routed across the room to a closet containing the rest of the hardware.

 

A Stridsberg MCA208M active multi coupler is used to split the signal to feed the scanners, with the unused outputs being fitted with 50-Ohm terminators. The audio outputs from the scanners are connected to a pair of Delta-44 HD four-input audio cards via the breakout boxes located on top of the scanner stacks. The cards are installed in an off-lease Compaq Evo PC which I obtained from Tiger Direct at the bargain price.

 

The PC is running Windows Vista Ultimate, and runs SimpleCast and Ice-Cast to stream the audio to ScanAmerica.us. Processor loading is currently around 20%, so the system will happily be able to add the other two scanners I intend to install in the coming months. Power for the scanners come from a single power supply via a homemade distribution block, avoiding the problems associated with so many "wall-wart" transformers!