DIY antenna for an AM/FM stereo?

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INresponse

INresponse

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Joined
Jan 9, 2021
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Location
Southern Utah
My house sits in an area where the radio signals struggle getting through the mountain ranges. Usually the car radios can get a good signal but sometimes even they struggle with a couple of the local channels. I want to set up my big Sony stereo system in the garage but the few times I tried I couldn't get a signal on most channels and the few I did get were terrible reception.
How can I run some wires from the garage to the eves outside over the garage doors? I know it can be done but the few times I tried just using old speaker wire proved unsuccessful. When I try to look for ideas online I either get advertisements for TV antennas or information for HAM radio antennas or small little setups designed for inside use only. I suspect the metal roof and metal siding on 3 sides of the house are probably adding to the problem but the front of the house is vinyl siding and I think it would be best if I ran the wires outside of the house. I just don't know how to set it up.
These are the connections on the back of the stereo.
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And I have this little wire for the FM that came with the stereo years ago which worked great in the city but isn't helping where I am now.
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I would probably need at least 20 feet of lead to get it out the front of the garage and above the garage door.
A good FM signal is mandatory but for occasional use an AM signal would be helpful. Any advice will be appreciated.
 
kd4ulw said:
Normally home AM antennas are a small loop of wire that sits on top of the radio. A dipole wire antenna for FM helps there. BTW, you need to rotate the AM antenna depending on the transmitter location, usually the FM isn’t as picky, depending on your location.

He are both antennas on Amazon for $10.

https://www.amazon.com/Bingfu-Anten...eywords=am+antenna&qid=1677490739&sr=8-8&th=1
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I have the square looking thing but it doesn't work here. Maybe because of the metal roof and siding? Honestly I am stumped because my neighbor gets decent reception on his stereo, but he doesn't have the metal interference. But since my truck sometimes has difficulty getting a clean signal I know our area isn't ideal for reception.
But, thank you.
 
Caribou said:
Hope you don't mind me piggybacking on your thread. I have the same problem except I need to boost the AM/FM signal on my truck. Any ideas would be appreciated.
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If you are so far away from a radio station that the signal is not clear a booster will only boost the unclear signal. Boosters are for helping a clean signal push further through the wire leading from the antenna to the receiver. They will not clean up a lousy signal from a distant station. Maybe there is a longer antenna you can use instead of the factory antenna?
 
A simple long wire antenna between trees as high off the ground as you can get it is the fast and easy way. A well tuned directional antenna placed high above the ground clutter is the best way.
 
I think you are on the right track when you said you wanted an outside antenna. With all the electronic pollution having so much metal round your house is a great thing. It does cause problems with an inside antenna.
 
First, I would take your radio itself (or a substitute smaller radio) outside the metal garage and see if and where your reception gets better. Move around the area. This will be much easier with a battery powered radio, preferably with a signal strength meter built in (but most probably don't have that). What I am suggesting here is to make sure that your reception problems are indeed an "indoor thing". That is a good starting assumption, but who knows? On your property it may be something else entirely. Say, interference from something else in the area - and going outside doesn't help. Try to determine if going outside with an antenna will help you before you go running the cables. You can also maybe determine where outside will give you the best signal - five feet from the garage, ten feet from the garage, on top of the garage roof?
 
Haertig said:
First, I would take your radio itself (or a substitute smaller radio) outside the metal garage and see if and where your reception gets better. Move around the area. This will be much easier with a battery powered radio, preferably with a signal strength meter built in (but most probably don't have that). What I am suggesting here is to make sure that your reception problems are indeed an "indoor thing". That is a good starting assumption, but who knows? On your property it may be something else entirely. Say, interference from something else in the area - and going outside doesn't help. Try to determine if going outside with an antenna will help you before you go running the cables. You can also maybe determine where outside will give you the best signal - five feet from the garage, ten feet from the garage, on top of the garage roof?
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Excellent idea to take it outside and try it. Next time we have a decent day I wail set it up on on a table in a few different areas outside to see if it is actually working. It should be, but sometimes things break just sitting on a shelf.
I have thought about mounting it to the peak of the roof but in this area due to the hills and my tall 2 story house the peak of my roof is taller than most trees within a 100 yards so I would hate for it to get hit by lightning. Of course if lighting hit the roof that would be bad too but it wouldn't fry my stereo. Although thunder storms are very rare around here, maybe one or two a year. Dang I miss a good thunder storm.

Anyone have thoughts on this antenna? It says to connect with 75 ohm coax cable. I just need to figure out what plug style that is on the back of the stereo.
1677544193118.png
 
That is an omni-directional FM antenna. It will receive equally no matter which direction the FM signal is being broadcast from. It will have lower gain than a directional FM antenna. Meaning it will not pull in weak stations as well. A directional antenna is designed to receive from a single direction. Say, if you know all your FM radio stations are being broadcast from a town to your south, you will get better reception using a directional antenna pointed south. But if you are in the middle of "broadcast city" with signals coming at you from all different directions, an onmi-directional antenna will work best (or a rotating directional one, but that's probably getting more complex and expensive than you want).
 
I should have mentioned ... once you move your antenna outside, you may not need high gain. A lower gain omni-direction may be all you need. But if your signal is still weak, and you have a known direction that you should aim at, the directional, a.k.a. uni-direction antenna may help.

I other words - if the signal is coming in just fine with a low gain antenna, putting a high gain antenna on there will not improve anything. Sure, your signal level may be higher, but you don't need that. It's like looking at two body builders where one can bench press twice what the other one can. Yeah, that's a big difference. But if you hand then a 10 lb weight, it's a meaningless strength difference that will not even be detectable.
 
I just use the TV antenna, I have a few antenna outlets that have coax connectors. For really good AM reception, C.Crane, a company that sells great radios, sells Terk AM Antennas, you just set it near to your AM radio, it works through a process called inductive coupling, I've seen one of these work and it's truly amazing. I just went to www.ccrane.com and their price is $49.99 for the antenna.
 
Haertig said:
That is an omni-directional FM antenna. It will receive equally no matter which direction the FM signal is being broadcast from. It will have lower gain than a directional FM antenna. Meaning it will not pull in weak stations as well. A directional antenna is designed to receive from a single direction. Say, if you know all your FM radio stations are being broadcast from a town to your south, you will get better reception using a directional antenna pointed south. But if you are in the middle of "broadcast city" with signals coming at you from all different directions, an onmi-directional antenna will work best (or a rotating directional one, but that's probably getting more complex and expensive than you want).
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Actually most the channels are to my south and my house faces south so I will look into that option. Thank you.
 
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