You are just using this for receiving only? A Discone is a nice wide-band compromise, but a cheaper way to go would be a scanner base antenna that Channel Master and Radio Shack had. In the early 1980's, I stuck a 30" AM / FM car antenna +30ft up a pine tree, and I couldn't believe what I was able to hear on that, 10M HAM, McDonalds 35MHz drive-through FREQ, 46 / 49MHz cordless phones from a couple of miles away, the regular police, fire, hospital maintenance and UHF MED 1 FREQ's, 2M HAM repeaters from +75 miles away and 2M simplex from guys over +20 miles away, Conrail, local radio station VHF remotes, UHF TV audio from stations +80 miles away, AM aircraft chit-chat on 123.450MHz from several states away, etc. Of coarse, I was spoiled up on a hill then. Today, I live in the bottom of a river valley, where I use a Diamond Discone Antenna to RX / TX wide-band on 6M FM, 2M HAM, MURS, 222MHz HAM, 440MHz HAM, but doesn't seem to match well on 462 / 467MHz GMRS FREQ's. For me, having a do-all low gain antenna works better than an antenna that has gain, since signal just heads to the hills and bounces back to me, but a lower gain antenna helps me take advantage of refraction and reflection, where I can get-out better locally. So, it really depends upon what you want to do and where you are located geographically. If you can afford to shell out +$100.00 for a wide-band Discone, go for it. You could use it to transmit on later in the future, if you plan that. However, if you are on a budget, look at a cheaper scanner base antenna out there. Heck, there are some sites and Youtube VID's out there that show you how to build your own. I've seen people even recycle TV antennas by mounting them vertically. The compromise there is that they tend to be directional, but great if you have a target area to monitor. Hope that helps. Good luck!!!!