External FM Antenna Options for Vintage Receiver

[hjames]

Not sure if the FM band in Europe/Scotland is that same as stateside -
but honestly - you might try a set of rabbit ears like we used to use on TV sets here.
In the US, the FM band is 88-108 Megahertz which falls between VHF TV chans 6 and 7.
You can set them on a stand so you can turn them to effect the best reception.
Might find a pair cheap at a yard sale or thrift shop?

For Am radio you may do well with a single long wire strung around the corner on 2 walls -
so you'd get an East-west with one wall and a N-S on the other

The other issue may be that the radio station you want could be on the other side of the building from you
and you may get some blockage from the station you want.

Outdoor antennas are nice and all that - but I do get the concept of signal chasing in a rented apartment.

Hi Hermit,

Many thanks for taking the time to help me out.

I have toyed with some of your suggestions over the last few days.

The company I bought the receiver from cleaned out the internals proir to my purchase so I would hope thats not the issue.

Regarding hooking up a coax- in an ideal world thats what I would do however, I live in a rented appartment, I dont know how secure the external antenna on the building is (its probably a few decades old), specifically I dont know if its ground properly. As such I wouldnt like to hook it up to my receiver. In the future when I eventually own my own house, I would plan to get an external antenna and coax hooked up that I am happy to connect to the receiver.

Using the current dipole antenna the signal meter reads ~1.3 on a scale of 1-5, so I guess that means that its not getting a very strong signal. The reason why I have positioned the antenna in its current position is that its hidden from view, I didnt want it visible in the living room...I realise if it was more visible it would probably get more signal.

What I will try doing is finding a better but still hidden position for the antenna, which affords a greater signal strenght. However as I mentined in my previous post, even with the signal strenght weak when I use the mono setting and the "HIFIL" button on the receiver I get a relatively clean sound (there is very minor crackle when I hold my ear up to the speaker, not audible unless I do this). To be honest I really cant hear any difference, other than eliminating the crackle, in sound quality when I turn on mono and HIFIL. If I decided to live with this option can you tell me if
1)Mono and HIFIL degrades the signal somewhat (even though I cant seem to hear a degredation)?
2)Would a very minor amount of crackle on the speakers cause them any damage?

Many thanks for your continued support.

All the best from a stormy Scotland,

Peter

 

[DO Hay]

Question is if what I have done is OK? It does works, it gets good reception.

The image shows the fm unbalanced 75 ohm antenna reception plug-ins, they are spring loaded so you insert wire into them. What I did was to take a 3 inch piece of speaker wire and clean the both ends of the wire. Then inserted one in the 75 ohm spot and one in the GND spot. Then I alligator clipped the other end wires to the two ends of a 300 ohm dipole antenna. Like I said, this method results in great reception. It is only temporary since the unit will be sold.