Kenwood KT-8300- too sensitive?

[ethangsmith]

Had a little time last evening to experiment. I didn't move the tuner, but I did start playing with the antenna a bit. I found that there must have been a touchy connection in my dipole antenna so I grabbed another one out of the drawer and used that one. Reception was a little more consistent, but it seems antenna placement is extremely critical to lessen the static sound in the background. If I do find a spot with minimal background static, even walking around in the house can cause it to get louder. The units are in my living room and if my wife walks out into the kitchen, the station basically fuzzes out though signal strength still shows over "4". I'm going to continue tinkering this weekend to see if can find any sources of EMI. I wish the tuner had a headphone port on it so I could easily test it outside without taking some sort of amp along with it. That's last resort.

 

[rcs16]

By monitoring the multi path you can try to get the best antenna orientation. But I have found depending on the conditions what works the best at one time in the day is not the best for all conditions for the whole day or weather conditions. But it is dependant in your particular station and situation. That is why a directional antenna with a rotor is the optimum solution in most cases. Omni antennas can be problematic

 

[ethangsmith]

I'd love to just put an antenna up on the roof, but fishing wire through the concrete and brick exterior walls of our 100 year old house would not be an easy task. Heck, even fishing wire through our interior walls is dang near impossible. And with their being rebar inside the concrete exterior walls (It's a rowhouse) and walls between my neighbor's houses, FM reception isn't great anywhere inside! I've been using dipoles since they are easy to move around as needed.