Vinyl Rules!
Well-Known Member
Why Do FM Antennas for Analog McIntosh tuners Break and Fall Down? [And are McIntosh Tube Tuners a Potential Cause of Spontaneous Human Conbustion?] :jawdrop:
Well, the answer generally depends on the number of hours you spend listening to analog FM broadcasts.
It is a scientifically documented fact that an FM antenna converts electro-magnetic energy from FM stations into electrical energy, which basically is electrons moving into your tuner. Analog FM signal electrons differ from digital HD FM electrons in that they are circularly polarized and have no rough edges to them to create disharmonious sound.
Digital HD FM signal electrons are quantumly polarized because they are awaiting the arrival of a Higgs boson to balance their Yukawa interaction. Said another way, digital HD FM signals are merely unbalanced bozos until their get their boson. Digital HD FM signal electrons also have numerous rough edges to them (like your backwoods country bumpkin relative from the hinterlands) and cause a very distasteful listening experience, but this is a subject for another thread.
When your FM antenna is manufactured, the manufacturer can only insert a finite number of electrons into each inch of the antenna's elements. As you use your FM antenna to listen to analog FM signals on your McIntosh analog tuner, these circularly polarized electrons with no rough edges are sent downstream into your tuner. As this happens, your antenna will become "ionized" and it will gradually deteriorate and eventually fall down as it loses its electrons. This explains why, when you come home from work one day, your FM antenna is lying on your roof (see below).
So what happens to all those electrons, you ask. Well, they migrate into your tuner and accumulate. With solid state tuners (including McIntosh solid state tuners) these circularly polarized electrons migrate to your tuner’s power supply capacitors after they’ve travelled through your tuner’s IF and multiplex sections. Over time, your power supply capacitors fill up with these circularly polarized electrons and they fail. And you either re-cap your tuner yourself or you send it off to be re-capped (and possibly re-aligned).
However, in tube McIntosh tuners there is a "grid leak" resistor circuit that allows the electrons to sneak out of the tuner and jump down on the floor in your room. You can't see them, but they're there. Trust me. As more and more of these escaped electrons pile up on the floor underneath your tuner, they have to go somewhere. Like water responding to gravity these used electrons seek out lower ground. Most often, they will generally migrate, like a pack of lemmings, out your back door slipping down your back steps into your back yard.
These used electrons generally sneak out of your home in the dark of night, when everyone is asleep. They are sentient, of course, and they do not wish to accidentally electrocute anyone who might step on them so that's why you never see them sneaking out of your house.
However, there is the occasional unfortunate incident, and it is a little-known fact that when someone IS unlucky enough to step on these electrons sneaking out, they burst into flames - This is called spontaneous human combustion (SHC – See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion . You can contact Agent Fox Muldar at the FBI's main office in Washington, DC for more information on this phenomenon.
McIntosh tube tuners, because of their "grid leak" resistor circuit, last much longer than solid-state tuners. Solid-state tuners stop working when enough electrons have piled up inside to short their power supply capacitors – They don't have a "grid leak" circuit and there is no place for these used electrons to escape. But sometimes solid-state tuners can be modified to last longer: A "quasi-grid leak" circuit can be inserted into the tuner if the MPX circuit of your tuner uses a dilitheum crystal for passive-resonant de-multiplexing. Consult your service manual or one of the modders listed below who support AudioKarma.
Now those electrons that have escaped to your back yard want to get back into your FM antenna, and they try and "pull" your antenna down to be re-united with it. Since your FM antenna is high, and the electrons are on the ground, this attraction is not very strong, but on a windy day, the electrons get lifted from the ground towards the FM antenna, and they pull and tug on it. And the wind often brings in free electrons that have escaped from your neighbor's homes (from TVs,
etc.), so there may be a lot of these things around. If too many electrons get lifted up all at once, they overload your FM antenna, pulling it down.
This is why your FM antenna usually falls down on windy days.
And the top RF engineers in this group have advised us that transmission tower antennas also suffer from this same problem, only they lose their electrons faster. Some of these transmission tower electrons hit your antenna and replenish the ones that are lost to your tuner. This is why FM antennas located closer to a strong station hold up better than FM antennas located distant from FM stations.
At least, that's how we understand it.
All is not lost, though:
(1) You can extend the life of your FM antenna by disconnecting it from your tuner when you're not listening. But overall, 5000 to 10000 hours spent listening to analog FM broadcasts will do in a standard FM antenna. And then you have to buy a new one. Or,
(2) You can purchase a special Mpingo wood FM antenna. However, they are exceedingly rare and extraordinarily expensive. There has not been one for sale since 2007. But we hear there may be one for sale next year on the auction site.
Through extensive (and expensive) research the manufacturer of the Mpingo wood FM antenna has determined that if but a single elusive Higgs boson can be captured and injected into a Mpingo seedling, the wood from the subsequent Mpingo tree is immune to losing its electrons.
Well, the answer generally depends on the number of hours you spend listening to analog FM broadcasts.
It is a scientifically documented fact that an FM antenna converts electro-magnetic energy from FM stations into electrical energy, which basically is electrons moving into your tuner. Analog FM signal electrons differ from digital HD FM electrons in that they are circularly polarized and have no rough edges to them to create disharmonious sound.
Digital HD FM signal electrons are quantumly polarized because they are awaiting the arrival of a Higgs boson to balance their Yukawa interaction. Said another way, digital HD FM signals are merely unbalanced bozos until their get their boson. Digital HD FM signal electrons also have numerous rough edges to them (like your backwoods country bumpkin relative from the hinterlands) and cause a very distasteful listening experience, but this is a subject for another thread.
When your FM antenna is manufactured, the manufacturer can only insert a finite number of electrons into each inch of the antenna's elements. As you use your FM antenna to listen to analog FM signals on your McIntosh analog tuner, these circularly polarized electrons with no rough edges are sent downstream into your tuner. As this happens, your antenna will become "ionized" and it will gradually deteriorate and eventually fall down as it loses its electrons. This explains why, when you come home from work one day, your FM antenna is lying on your roof (see below).
So what happens to all those electrons, you ask. Well, they migrate into your tuner and accumulate. With solid state tuners (including McIntosh solid state tuners) these circularly polarized electrons migrate to your tuner’s power supply capacitors after they’ve travelled through your tuner’s IF and multiplex sections. Over time, your power supply capacitors fill up with these circularly polarized electrons and they fail. And you either re-cap your tuner yourself or you send it off to be re-capped (and possibly re-aligned).
However, in tube McIntosh tuners there is a "grid leak" resistor circuit that allows the electrons to sneak out of the tuner and jump down on the floor in your room. You can't see them, but they're there. Trust me. As more and more of these escaped electrons pile up on the floor underneath your tuner, they have to go somewhere. Like water responding to gravity these used electrons seek out lower ground. Most often, they will generally migrate, like a pack of lemmings, out your back door slipping down your back steps into your back yard.
These used electrons generally sneak out of your home in the dark of night, when everyone is asleep. They are sentient, of course, and they do not wish to accidentally electrocute anyone who might step on them so that's why you never see them sneaking out of your house.
However, there is the occasional unfortunate incident, and it is a little-known fact that when someone IS unlucky enough to step on these electrons sneaking out, they burst into flames - This is called spontaneous human combustion (SHC – See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion . You can contact Agent Fox Muldar at the FBI's main office in Washington, DC for more information on this phenomenon.
McIntosh tube tuners, because of their "grid leak" resistor circuit, last much longer than solid-state tuners. Solid-state tuners stop working when enough electrons have piled up inside to short their power supply capacitors – They don't have a "grid leak" circuit and there is no place for these used electrons to escape. But sometimes solid-state tuners can be modified to last longer: A "quasi-grid leak" circuit can be inserted into the tuner if the MPX circuit of your tuner uses a dilitheum crystal for passive-resonant de-multiplexing. Consult your service manual or one of the modders listed below who support AudioKarma.
Now those electrons that have escaped to your back yard want to get back into your FM antenna, and they try and "pull" your antenna down to be re-united with it. Since your FM antenna is high, and the electrons are on the ground, this attraction is not very strong, but on a windy day, the electrons get lifted from the ground towards the FM antenna, and they pull and tug on it. And the wind often brings in free electrons that have escaped from your neighbor's homes (from TVs,
etc.), so there may be a lot of these things around. If too many electrons get lifted up all at once, they overload your FM antenna, pulling it down.
This is why your FM antenna usually falls down on windy days.
And the top RF engineers in this group have advised us that transmission tower antennas also suffer from this same problem, only they lose their electrons faster. Some of these transmission tower electrons hit your antenna and replenish the ones that are lost to your tuner. This is why FM antennas located closer to a strong station hold up better than FM antennas located distant from FM stations.
At least, that's how we understand it.
All is not lost, though:
(1) You can extend the life of your FM antenna by disconnecting it from your tuner when you're not listening. But overall, 5000 to 10000 hours spent listening to analog FM broadcasts will do in a standard FM antenna. And then you have to buy a new one. Or,
(2) You can purchase a special Mpingo wood FM antenna. However, they are exceedingly rare and extraordinarily expensive. There has not been one for sale since 2007. But we hear there may be one for sale next year on the auction site.
Through extensive (and expensive) research the manufacturer of the Mpingo wood FM antenna has determined that if but a single elusive Higgs boson can be captured and injected into a Mpingo seedling, the wood from the subsequent Mpingo tree is immune to losing its electrons.
