EV's Best Top Rated FM and HD Radio Antenna Guide & Reviews - Page 2

EscapeVelocity · 07-17-2009, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Piggie said:

FM6 is the best buy for the money for someone that wants a station up to 100 miles away. Back in the 70's I had one up and listened to Tally radio from Gainesville about 125 miles. It even came in during the day. It was only 15 feet high and about 50 ft of coax. You could turn it to Orlando and hear all their stations (about 90 miles).

Thanks piggie, it does look like a price performance value leader from specs. I may get one.

Piggie · 07-17-2009, 02:55 PM

It's not the best, but for price to performance it kicks the llama's ass. I have had one in three different houses. They have been making that antenna for 30 years plus. It's pretty broad across the front because of the long director spacing but it has a lot of gain in that length of boom. I point it at Gainesville with a 50 degree spread in their towers and gets them all.

But if you live in town and just want a solid signal indoors the AntennaCraft FMSS is a great deal. None of the more expensive omnis out perform it. It only has unity gain but the second element gets rid of the nulls off the end of a single folded dipole.

EscapeVelocity · 07-17-2009, 04:09 PM

Yeah, a lot of the antennas are just 0db gain.

The only difference among the turnstyle dipoles is price and quality of build. Although, I wonder how the folded dipoles are vs the Winegard 6010?

Rabbit Ears, FM Tack Up Dipole, APS Attic Intenna, all about 0db gain. The Whips are also 0db gain (without amplifiers). How about the loops? The yagis are where the real gains and directivity start to be made.

In regards to the amplifiers, it seems to me that they are less desireable for analog FM, than digital FM (HD Radio), because of their adding their own noises to the signal down the transmission line. However with digital, you have the cliff effect and 0s and 1s BER type deal where you get good clean audio or you dont.

What say you?

Dont know about the pyramids from Terk and Parsec, but Im not overly enthusiastic about them.

I have a BIC Beambox FM10, and the 2 Radio Shacks listed in the Discontinued antenna section, plus Rabbit Ears and FM Dipole.

The Antennacraft FM6 and FMSS are pretty common as they were sold under the Archer and Radio Shack brand names in RS for decades.

EscapeVelocity · 07-17-2009, 04:28 PM

There are also benefits to be had with a tunable antenna, where you tune it to particular frequencies on the dial. Many of these are tunable, the Beamboxes, Radio Shack antennas, and the Godar telescoping whip, Rabbit Ears, all tunable.

You can also derive benefits from a VHF Rabbit Ears Adjustable Dipole antenna with a "fine tuning" adjustment or knob.....which is impedence matching circuitry.

Aaron62 · 07-17-2009, 07:52 PM

Newby question here. Why would one need an FM antenna or is this more or less for rural FM listeners?

Sorry if it's a dumb question. haha Here in LA, all I use is some copper wire connected on the back of my Harmon Kardon receiver and no antenna.

Piggie · 07-17-2009, 09:15 PM

Even in a town like Gainesville, FL which isn't that small, to get any variety on FM, you need to be able to beam Jacksonville and Orlando. Where it's difficult on a good day to pick up their TV anymore, the FM comes pouring in with a beam. If you get a something simple like a FMSS up 30 ft or so, you don't need the beam.

The nice thing about FM is you don't need an amp most of the time. Most feed lines are about 50 ft and that is only 1 lonely db at 100 MHz in RG6.

Will an amp lower the noise floor? I don't really know, in theory yes. Most of the time to bother with an external antenna you have a decent receiver. I have never needed one to hear the stations I was trying to receive.

There is so much clutter on the band when trying to listen out of town (not DXing but actually listening), you normally only try for the 100KW stations anyway.

Another good use is low power stations LOS and not too far away (less than 30 to 40 miles). There is a 5KW Jazz station in Gainesville about 23 miles from me. I barely get it full quieting on the car (fades some). Indoors it doesn't exist. On the FM6 it's rock solid.

EscapeVelocity · 07-17-2009, 09:17 PM

Wire makes great antennas. Serious analog FM folks have all sorts of reasons for wanting an antenna, multipath, co channel interfernce, DXing, signal quality. HD Radio apparently is more difficult and requires better antennas than your average uncritical FM analog listener.

I know that people used to record the King Biscuit Flower Hour and The Grateful Dead Hour and wanted as good of sound quality as they could get to do so. Back in the cassette tape days.

Piggie · 07-17-2009, 09:26 PM

In the 70's FM was fairly new. We had one low power rock FM in Gainesville. It was ok, better than nothing. Tampa had a kick butt station from U of S Florida. We would beam it late at night when they switched from classical to rock after midnight. Right after that Florida State University put up a 24/7 rock station so we swung the beam there and left it.

Even now Gainesville has a soft rock, decent rock, and a classic. But Jacksonville has much better rock, playing more new stuff.

FM travels much better than TV. If you have a decent boom box, you can hear the 100KW Jacksonville stations in Gainesville at 60 miles on a single whip by finding a sweet spot. Then there are apts and houses or worse trailers that don't have an indoor sweet spot. A simple FMSS will pull them in. If someone wants to do a tiny big of work just putting rabbit ears on the balcony, or a twin lead folded dipole outside will do the trick. A friend of mine can't pull in anything in his metal building in his yard that is is work shop. He put a FMSS on a short pole, just 10 ft and gets everything in 60 plus miles.

EscapeVelocity · 07-18-2009, 10:14 AM

Great post about FM, AM, Shortwave antennas here by Piggie.

EscapeVelocity · 07-18-2009, 04:39 PM

I found out who makes that ebay special that I listed in the Outdoor Dipole section. Its this outfit.

FM DX Antenna Co.

FM Stereo 1/2 Wave Dipole Outdoor Antenna 88-108 MHz

And he also has a very interesting offering, a Rabbit Ear Dipole with Impedence Matching Fine Tuning Knob.

FM Indoor Dipole Stereo/HD Antenna with Fine Tuning

Which looks very promising as well. Id like to pick one up, but they are OOS. This comment is interesting as well reproduced in full here....

Quote:

There was a thread recently on the Audiokarma.org FM Tuner Message Board (which I love) on indoor FM antennas. Normally I stay out of those discussions but will follow them closely but I decided to wade in this one. The post looked like a nice entry for here:

As no one has mentioned one, Radio Shack sold a pair of FM-only rabbit ears considered the best available indoor antenna by many FM enthusiasts that have been around a while. I bought mine about 15 years ago and it is very good; the best I’ve owned and I’ve tried them all through the years as some years I find myself living where I can’t have an outdoor solution. Radio Shack stopped selling it about 5 or 6 years ago.

For transparency, the antenna I’m about to mention is one that I had manufactured based on the RS rabbit ears. I purposely haven’t jumped into the conversation because I have always gone out of my way to not appear as a shill or spammer for my products but two of the products I sell are the best available or equal to the best available. They are the outdoor dipole I sell and the indoor dipole I sell; they are the best omni-directional solution for FM radio available.

The indoor dipole I sell has the same fine tuning knob the Radio Shack rabbit ears has and both are telescopic. I have done a head-to-head test and FM signals are stronger on the new antenna I sell and I suspect it is because I’m using coax with an F connector rather than the 300 ohm flat with spades that the Radio Shack one has.

One other difference between this new one and the original RS set is that I had these built so that it could be mounted completely vertical with both rods on a vertical plane (straight up and down). This makes a HUGE difference in the locations I tried it in. I set the rods to the 1/4 wave length for the goal station and then adjust the knob to best reception and seriously can pull in stations noticably stronger than with the other highly-regarded set. This turned out to be the best orientation in two locations which surprised me because I have always believed the slight directionality of the rabbit ears at 90 degrees was one of the strong advantages; even in that orientation the new set out-performed the RS rabbit ears.

For additional transparency, let me add that any outdoor antenna will work better than the indoor antenna I have (except maybe those crappy MD and Fanfare end-fed half-waves that are actually marine two-way radio antennas as they are the equivalent of having a wet string for an FM aerial) and in addition any directional antenna, even the smallest, will work better (with a rotor) than any omni-directional antenna.

The rods on the antenna I sell are fairly flimsy and break easily so they need to be handled with care. I always mention this because my other antennas are darn near impossible to break, but this one is easy to break and you don’t want to break it because it really is a fantastic performer.

In addition, with indoor FM antennas, all the rules still apply, height is great, no obstructions is even more important so putting the antenna in front of a window to the side of the house where the FM transmitter is located is best. If you live in a metal trailer you probably aren’t going to get good reception indoors from any antenna as there is no way I’m aware to overcome the laws of physics.

And an FM Rhombic Antenna! Cool!

FM DX Antenna Co. Indoor Rhombic FM HD/Stereo Antenna with 3.5 db Gain for Attic Mounting