Best style antenna to improve FM recption?

[BellyUpFish]

Hey guys-

Maybe someone can help me. I'm a complete noob to antennae.

Long story short, I live in a small town that had 2 radio stations worth listening to. Well, they just changed formats on my favorite station and I'm forced to move over to a different station. 107.3, to be exact. Occasionally 102.7 is worth listening to.

I've also got an old school Sony ST-80 that I'm kinda partial to as the tuner.

I'd like to build an antenna to get the best reception. Mounting it in the attic is no problem. Mounting it outside, could be made to work, but I'd rather keep it in the attic, if possible.

I get "decent" reception now, I can listen to the station, but it's got a fair amount of static along with it.

Anyone have a suggestion as to the best type of antenna to look towards?

Bazooka? Loop? Di-pole?

Thanks

Belly

 

[n4yek]

A beam antenna would be the best antenna for your situation, if you have room in the attic to install.

 

[KenMaltz]

Best FM Antenna

You don't indicate which type of antenna you currently are using, which would be helpful to know. However, if both the stations you want to listen to are in the same general direction from your home, a Yagi (beam) would be the best type because it is a directional antenna and would give you gain. If your intended stations are in different directions you would either have to rotate your Yagi or use a non-directional antenna. You could easily build or buy a dipole for FM broadcast reception. It wouldn't give you much gain but it would favor stations perpendicular to the elements.

Ken, KC2YRJ

 

[Ubbe]

Here in Sweden the goverment controlled station transmitters use horizontal polarised antennas and the commercial stations use vertical dipoles. Many house owners then choose to use a folded dipole that look like a Z to let half the antenna work as a horizontal polarised and the other half as a vertical.

I guess US only use vertical antennas in the FM broadcast towers?

What antenna and position of it do you use now?

/Ubbe

 

[iMONITOR]

There are some off the shelf options reasonably priced:
https://www.solidsignal.com/c.asp?c=3841&d=AM-FM-Radio-Antennas

Or try doing a Google search for: FM broadcast antennas DIY, you find lots of ideas and even some actual plans or measurements.

 

[krokus]

I guess US only use vertical antennas in the FM broadcast towers?

Most use a circular polarization, since most homes have a horizontal antenna, cars have vertical, and portable listeners could have anything.

Sent using Tapatalk

 

[krokus]

Anyone have a suggestion as to the best type of antenna to look towards?

This type of antenna should help. You can mount it in the attic, and run a coax to the radio.

http://www.winegard.com/radio

Sent using Tapatalk

 

[majoco]

What Ken said on his very first post - welcome to the playpen, Ken.

You don't indicate which type of antenna you currently are using, which would be helpful to know. However, if both the stations you want to listen to are in the same general direction from your home, a Yagi (beam) would be the best type because it is a directional antenna and would give you gain.

It wouldn't have to be a solid metal construction up in the roof space - you can staple this to one of the trusses. I made one simply by taping the elements to a garden cane - see.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTshXYsRss

Report back if you don't get enough signal with this simple dipole and we'll show how to add a reflector/director.

 

[cmdrwill]

What was the Link to the calculator for that antenna?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTshXYsRss

 

[majoco]

Right at the end of the video there is a "still' page showing how to calculate the length, but it's not as critical as he seems to infer. He's made a 'double bazooka' which IMHO is over-complicated. The middle of the the band is 98MHz, 100MHz is near enough, a wavelength at 100MHz is 3metres, say 120inches. Each leg needs to be a quarter wavelength so 30inches will be good enough. He's right about not needing a balun, the impedance of a half-wave dipole is 75ohms near enough so RG6 will be fine for the downlead.

My earlier suggestion of taping two bits of 30" wire to a garden cane has worked well enough for me for years, just tie it to a couple of the roof trusses facing the right direction - the KISS principle

Also one of the comments was that you needed to point one of the ends at the transmitter - wrong, a dipole needs to be broadside to the transmitter, there is a null off the ends.

 

[Ubbe]

The conenctor for the FM antenna are 300 ohm without ground that are supposed to be used with ladderline. If you connect a coax the shield will work as an antenna and what is connected to the end of the coax more or less doesn't matter for the reception.

This tuner doesn' have any 75 ohm coax connector that are common on more modern tuners.

/Ubbe

 

[mastr]

...This tuner doesn' have any 75 ohm coax connector that are common on more modern tuners...

That is an easy and inexpensive issue to fix.

Impedance Matching Transformer