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Indoor antenna for my use case?

T

Taketheflame

Super Member
Hey all,

So I'm curious about the use of an indoor antenna (outdoor not an option for me at this time, unfortunately) to hopefully improve my FM reception a bit, as well as for something less "cluttery" than a dipole - I also need something with a longer cable so I can locate the antenna closer to my windows (which seems to help).

I'm within a major city, but not in a "concrete jungle" part of town. The station I primarily wish to tune into broadcasts from about 6 miles away, so I'm guessing I should avoid anything amplified? I've also read many mixed reviews (some bad, some great) on those inexpensive Terk units.

Should I try an omnidirectional antenna, or would it be better to try something directional/rabbit ears style? Most stations do come in OK, but I'm hoping for some modest improvement on the cheap if possible.

FWIW, I'm mainly using my SX-950's tuner, but do have some standalone units as well.

Thanks!
 
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Taketheflame said:
Hey all,

So I'm curious about the use of an indoor antenna (outdoor not an option for me at this time, unfortunately) to hopefully improve my FM reception a bit, as well as for something less "cluttery" than a dipole - I also need something with a longer cable so I can locate the antenna closer to my windows (which seems to help).

I'm within a major city, but not in a "concrete jungle" part of town. The station I primarily wish to tune into broadcasts from about 6 miles away, so I'm guessing I should avoid anything amplified? I've also read many mixed reviews (some bad, some great) on those inexpensive Terk units.

Should I try an omnidirectional antenna, or would it be better to try something directional/rabbit ears style? Most stations do come in OK, but I'm hoping for some modest improvement on the cheap if possible.

FWIW, I'm mainly using my SX-950's tuner, but do have some standalone units as well.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I've been using a Terk for a couple of years. Works fine for me...based on your physical locale as you describe, I think it would work well for you. This particular model has an adjustment knob for the amplifier.

Cheers and Good Luck!

Terk Edge FM Antenna.jpg
 
I will always recommend the Magnum Dynalab ST-2, it's fantastic. (you could mount it on the wall outside your window, perhaps?) My Citation 18 tuner is in my basement office, and I have mine mounted at the top of the stairs, and I can pull in everything I want (I live ~20mi north of Boston.)
 
What do you use now? A basic ribbon style dipole should work well for you. The nice thing about dipoles like this is that you can get away with bending the elements around corners, inverted V, etc. i have one that is pinned on the back of a large picture frame. You can’t see the antenna and it works well enough. Your proximity should allow you to use less than ideal antennas or placement.
 
FWIW, I`ve had town residing friends who just purchased a replacement automobile radio antenna, which is omnidirectional and a adapter to go from the antenna`s male coax Motorola plug to a F59 male connector.
Or just purchase a car radio extension cable, cut the male end off strip it back a bit to expose the wires and connect the wires to the thumb screws, or screws as the case maybe labled 75 ohms.
They just stand up the antenna behind a window curtain, etc. out of sight connect the antenna to their receiver and get good reception on all the local channels their interested in.
 
2526 said:
View attachment 2992743
I get very good reception with this Magnum Dynalab ribbon antenna.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I bought one of these for my cousin as a gift for a favor he done me, hooked to his Sansui 8 DLX, to specifically get him away from what I felt was a lesser Amplified Terk. Works just fine in the city, no idea on range?

I hooked it up, all was fine, very simplistic.

And as for the prior Terk "stick" he had, and in truth, I reckon "A Antenna is better than no Antenna!" LOL
 
Rabbit ears look retro-cool & should work well in your case. Extend each rod to about 30", position to suit. Almost anything will yield good results in your close-to-xmtr situation.
 
Taketheflame said:
I'm within a major city, but not in a "concrete jungle" part of town. The station I primarily wish to tune into broadcasts from about 6 miles away, so I'm guessing I should avoid anything amplified? I've also read many mixed reviews (some bad, some great) on those inexpensive Terk units
Click to expand...

For the most part, amplifiers actually only help in some fringe cases. If you are trying to push the signal through a length of coax, the amplifier will help avoid the losses. That being said they usually don't increase S/N ratio. You can get in to some cases with a very low enough noise amplifier you can actually increase your SNR...but if that signal is still noisy weak mess, the amp only makes it a noisy weak mess that's louder than the ambient noise.

The only thing I worry about is multipath. If the concrete jungle is between you and the transmitters, I can think of some scenarios where an omni on the edge of urban sprawl might cause issues. Multipath can actually make a signal seem weak due to FM capture effect. Nissan cars had "FM Diversity RX" to help this; they had a second antenna on the back window and the radio would flip between whichever receiver had fewer signal issues.

I do want to say there's one problem you won't properly overcome, physics. You can make antennas smaller, but then there are compromises. A lot of SDR Shortwave guys went nuts over this "miniwhip" for shortwave...an impossibly short antenna. Well...for starters it was an active antenna; so it was leveraging low-noise amplifiers; but that wasn't the trick. The directions said you have to mount the thing about 30ft off the ground. If you don't do that, it won't work right. The shield of the coax was actually the antenna. People just didn't realize they had 40ft of wire as an antenna. Even used the coax to carry the DC. A dipole is the size it is due to wavelengths. Your best performing dipoles are about a half wavelength long; 98mhz happens to be 3m long. You can shorten this and you'll still get things, it will still be an antenna; but various properties change.

We can also talk about signal polarization, though it's not too critical with FM. Originally FM service was horizontally polarized. This became a problem with cars and their vertically oriented antennas. This why the VAST majority of antennas for the home are horizontal in some form. The "disc" antennas are basically just a horizontal dipole bent in to a circular shape. Horizontal is where the majority of the power is sent.

The reality is there's probably 30000 antennas that will work for you and another 30000 that won't; at least if you're looking to buy something.
 
Twin lead 300 ohm wire is dirt cheap. Make your own dipole antenna. I made a 10 foot version which works really well...better than the crappy 3 foot ones you normally get with new gear.
 
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