FM antenna needed

bc

Well-known Member
I will try this on a separate topic. Have 3 radios that have this single mast type half a set of rabbit ears for the fm. Need some type of indoor or outdoor antenna that I can attach to a radio without taking it apart. The tin on the barn makes for lousy reception. Have tin foil on it now which doesn't help. Thanks.




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What's the story on the radio?

I had one exactly like it, got it for Christmas when I was about 10.

It worked until it got knocked off the bench at work and broke the case.

Still worked if it was in the mood, finally threw it away a couple years ago.

I spent many hours being entertained scanning police radios, all kinds of strange stations out there.

The best was mobile phones, only the elite had them back then, for business purposes only! Yeah right, some very colorful conversations for young ears to hear!
 
Take a length of insulated wire, any kind (bell wire is good). Strip one end and wrap it around your radio's antenna. Run the other end of the wire outside and hang it vertically outside the building. Just make sure it's on the side of the building facing the station(s) you're trying to receive.
 
I dont have an answer for you. I would truly like to find one. Here at my work whish is a steel bldg and at home which is a
polebarn I have tried it all. I have put a piece of bell type wire as mentioned and wrapped one end on the antenna and run through
a hole in the siding and up the outside, used coax and clipped the center wire to antenna and ran it uo and out of bldg, run wireto
siding and NONE of it works. Tried different radios too. Since I listen to one station pretty much all the time I'm thinking of
locating the radio outside and running a wire in for the speaker.
 
FM has a 3 meter wavelength. Inside a tin building is inside a Faraday cage (magnetic suppression) so string one up under the eves about 3m long out
of the old fashioned twin lead flat tv wire, at both ends, solder the two leads together. In the middle cut one lead and attach more twin lead, or a
coax with one end connected to the center, and the other attached to the shielding. It will work if placed outside and at least 6 inches away from
the building metal (which could be attached to the shielding as well. Jim
 

Thanks. I'll work through these ideas one at a time. Tried 2 radios today with a short 14ga jumper from the end to the tin. Didn't help one but might have helped the other a little, hard to tell. The stations I try to get are around 100 to 105 on the dial. There are 2 or 3 close high powered stations that tend to drown them out. The stations in the low 90's come in better if I wanted to listen to gospel preachers and music. I'm trying to remember if I start with a 3 meter wire, would I want longer or shorter to get to the upper end of FM. Thinking a little longer.

Got one or two newer tv type yagi antennas but those are probably for a higher frequency. Don't want to put my ham antenna and tuner out there just for fm.
 
What worked for me was a piece of bare solid 12 ga wire about 5' long. Wrap it around the antenna enough to hold in there. Take the other end and wrap it around the metal conduit of the circuit. I don't get all the stations but it's better than it was.

HTH
 
You said: "The stations I try to get are around 100 to 105 on the dial. There are 2 or 3 close high powered stations that tend to drown them out." If this is the
problem about the only thing that's going to help is a directional antenna, if the stations are in different directions, or a radio with better selectivity. GE
sold a portable AM FM radio in about the 1980s called a "Super Radio". It was claimed to have better than average sensitivity & selectivity.
 
Boy those were the days. I first had a Regency scanner with the red lights flashing across the front. Still have it and it still works but today it almost never has traffic on it. Later programmable scanners allowed me to pick up the mobile phones you mentioned along with all the police and fire. The Uniden on my desk today is so complicated I cannot program it but, good news, it can program itself and is so fast it will pick up ALL stations in the area. Police, fire and most all others now use a digital signal making all old radios obsolete. A neighboring county has a frequency so proprietary that NO scanner can pick it up so far.
 

That may be the last resort Ralph. Car radios pickup just fine. Might have to find one. Just have a few of these old radios around. Hate to take old things that work to the dump.

I got a couple fm radio dipole loop antennas found down in a box. Each single side loop measures just under 29" for a total of about 4' 10". Did some research and that size is designed for 96.8 on the fm dial. 88 is longer and the other way is shorter. 104.3 would be 4.487 feet or 4' 5 3/4" long or half that for each leg. 100.3 is total of 4' 8". So I just need to fold over and tape about 2 1/8" on each end to make it shorter.

The formula is 468 divide by frequency equals the total length of the top part of the dipole antenna. Don't think the length of the drop part going to the radio matters. Trick is to mount it away from the tin. Might have to screw on a board extension.

A dipole for fm88 is 5.318' long and for fm108 is 4.333' long. Each leg would be half of that. So there is about a 12" spread over the spectrum.
 
As mentioned in the AM antenna discussion a car radio with speaker & power supply inside with a car antenna outside preferably mounted on some metal surface might solve your problem. Car radios are generally much better than portables. Try to find one from before they started putting 25 speakers all over the car with the resulting many, many wires coming out the back. Some car radios from the late 60s & early 70s had 4 wires - 2 for the speaker, 1 for power to the radio, & one for the dial light & ground was through the metal mounting.
 

Took my two dipole fm antennas to the barn. Bent the ends and taped them to 26 7/8". One was 29" to start with wire ends and the other was 30" to start with a coax connector.

Took the other radio that wouldn't get anything and run the bare wire dipole through the tin outside. Wrapped one wire around the antenna and it worked great. The dipole part was just hanging down outside but I went ahead and got some sticks to spread it and hold it about 6" from the tin. Didn't make a difference to spread it but when I touched it, it was better inside.

Had the multi-band shortwave radio in the pic wired to the barn tin and it was working ok so I didn't add the dipole to it. Of course when I was leaving last night about dark, the reception went to heck. Will check it today after I get my moderna shot.
 

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