FM Antenna indoor

[ZesPak]

Hi guys,

I'm usually up to speed on all of this but this goes outside my realm a bit.
I'm having very poor reception on my stereo system using an FM "wire" antenna.

I was looking at other antennas for FM radio, but it seems that you can go for a £2 wire to a £100 antenna. Also, there's active and passive ones?
Can anyone shed some insights on this? Will a small antenna sporting two "ears" massively improve my reception? I'm receiving now, but when I get closer to the radio the signal seems to drop.

Any insights in this would be great, thanks in advance!

[megaphone]

Try the TV aerial and see if the reception improves.

[TonyRPH]

An active antenna contains an amplifier which boosts the signal.

However... if the signal is poor in the first place, there is nothing to boost but noise.

And hence the phrase "garbage in, garbage out" comes to the fore.

If the signal is good enough in the first place for decent reception, you are unlikely to need an active aerial.

As suggested, you could try plugging into the TV aerial (if you have one) although the frequencies are very different, so this rarely improves things that much, unless your signal is pretty good in the first place.

One thing to try is varying the polarisation of the aerial, e.g. if it's currently vertical, try laying it horizontal, but keep it as high as possible and away from metal objects. Likewise if it's already horizontal, try it in a vertical orientation.

If you have one of those 'T' type aerials (300 ohm) then if you have that vertical, you need to maintain the 'T' even when on it's side for a short distance before going down the wall.

Hope this helps.

ETA: By 'T' aerial I mean one of these:

Edited by TonyRPH on Wednesday 6th May 21:49

[maxdb]

I would get a Dipole type antenna from a place like Maplin then either put it outside or in the attic. Another thing to consider is the sensitivity of the FM tuner.