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Post Your Antennas!

Hey y'all!

I'm curious what antennas all of you guys are using for FM DX. I'd like to upgrade mine eventually, but curious what you guys are using. Did you build them yourself or buy them?

Thanks! Love this hobby.
 
Using a 4-element Stellar Labs Yagi @ 30' here. I also utilize a Antennacraft V/U/FM combo (150" boom) at roughly the same height on occasion.
 
For AM/MW I'm using a powered 20" PK Loop (HDXLSM525-1725KHz) in the winter DXing months. Works great in most cases, but on very rare occasions the internal ferrite antenna does a bit better for some reason. Plugging into my 990X antenna connection ( vs passively ) makes a huge difference. It was expensive, but I'm happy with it. If PK made bigger loops, I'd buy them instantly. Unfortunately, I did talk with Paul, and he said he does not ship anything larger as the international shipping costs would be to prohibitive. If, on the other hand, if you are in Australia, "he could" accommodate a request for a larger antenna.

None DXing months, just the ferrite antenna with a bit of help from the AN200 loop. I'm thinking about getting a Terk Advantage as well.

FM:: I just use the whip provided on the radio. My living courtiers makes owning and putting up a yagie impossible. The best I've gotten bare bones was 178 miles.
 
Using a 4-element Stellar Labs Yagi @ 30' here. I also utilize a Antennacraft V/U/FM combo (150" boom) at roughly the same height on occasion.
Have you tried the modification? Extra fifth element. I wonder if someone will try designing a sixth, to equal or exceed the Antennacraft FM-6.


More FM antennas. The mods and the 5 element Yagi look possible for most of us.


Picture of Stellar Mod.

stellar.jpg

WARD 750 Petoskey used a Stellar 4 element to use for an off air feed to simulcast WLDR 101.9 Traverse City. WLDR has been off the air or on STA.
 
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Have you tried the modification? Extra fifth element. I wonder if someone will try designing a sixth, to equal or exceed the Antennacraft FM-6.


More FM antennas. The mods and the 5 element Yagi look possible for most of us.


Picture of Stellar Mod.

stellar.jpg

WARD 750 Petoskey used a Stellar 4 element to use for an off air feed to simulcast WLDR 101.9 Traverse City. WLDR has been off the air or on STA.
I was thinking about it, but ultimately put it up "As-is." I did modify the center support for the driven element. Seemed crummy, and I felt the design may allow water into the balun enclosure. Good value though, I actually purchased two of them on sale from Newark for <$15. Spare is for DXing from in-laws cabin.

This is really what I'd like:
88MHz - 108MHz Broadcast

Seriously considering the 11-element yagi.
 
Have you tried the modification? Extra fifth element. I wonder if someone will try designing a sixth, to equal or exceed the Antennacraft FM-6.


More FM antennas. The mods and the 5 element Yagi look possible for most of us.


Picture of Stellar Mod.

stellar.jpg

WARD 750 Petoskey used a Stellar 4 element to use for an off air feed to simulcast WLDR 101.9 Traverse City. WLDR has been off the air or on STA.
I'd love an FM-6, or a Stereo Probe 9. But good luck finding one at this point. Although you never know, perhaps at Dayton this coming year, assuming its not canceled again.
 
The FM-6 Modification gives awesome F/B, F/Largest Minor Lobe performance, 25 dB across the band. It looks fairly straightforward, if you can get a solid shrink wrap connection for the element extensions. I've wound coils just like that for a Tom Kneitel 103 Simple Transistor Project. You could probably use the Ground Wire from a short piece of ROMEX 14/2.

 
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Interesting. Think I'd try brazing the elements instead of the heatshrink. Rolled aluminum elements are thin, so heat would need to be kept low.
 
Don'tg be fooled by that tux I'm wearing in my avatar. I'm barefoot!

Although back in the day as a poor, broke, teenager I improvised with some unorthodox stuff. When I first started DXing in junior high school, I used a COPPER windows screen, hooked to my radio with about two feet of insulated wire. It actually worked pretty well.

During my first two years of college, I was in a third floor dorm room, which was the upper floor of the building. The ceiling was directly below a steel beam from the building roof. The result was amazing.

Fast forward to my senior year, and I was sharing an off-campus apartment with a couple of other guys. Second floor of a two-story house. There were some exposed copper pipes in the kitchen. So I just put my radio next to them. Also amazing.

Even my roomates were impressed. I can't go so far as to claim that it was exactly a chick magnet, but one of my roomates' girlfriend was from Peoria, and liked my being able to dial up WIRL whenever she came over....so long as it was daytime.
 
I once took a suggestion from a book about apartment operation for hams. It involved running vary, fine, thin wire through an antenna tuner (for transmit). I made some contacts that way, It came down quickly though.
 
Mine was a 100-150 foot long wire. I got KPMC/KNZR 1560 on it in SE Michigan after WQXR/WQEW/WFME sign off at 12:07 AM back in the day. You could get WCFL 1000 and WOWO 1190 with a Hearever Rocket Radio sometimes, after local station sign offs, in the middle of the Night.


You can buy new ones, but the diodes are not good. You need to find the best 1N34s and replace it you can, to be a decent crystal radio.

This is relatively new.

Here are indoor parasitic add ons for folded dipole antennas. I suppose you could lengthen them slightly for the 88-92 MHz aficionados.

 
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We've been in our current home for a little over 3 years now. After we closed on the house, I was poking around in the basement and noticed a piece of 12/2 UF (Outdoor Romex) exiting the house. The wire was cut off inside and tucked into the floor joists. Outside, it ran into a conduit and underground. Curiosity got the better of me, and I connected my signal generator to the end, sent some RF into it (I found ~350 KHz works well) and traced it by sweeping my Sony IC-SW7600 back and forth along the ground. Long story short, it ran about 350', off our property into a neighbor's yard, then abruptly stops, seemingly cut off underground. I've used this as an MW receiving antenna for the past several years with good results. Yes, I have other antennas, loops, etc. But I call this my "BUG" antenna: Beverage UNderground :)
 
We've been in our current home for a little over 3 years now. After we closed on the house, I was poking around in the basement and noticed a piece of 12/2 UF (Outdoor Romex) exiting the house. The wire was cut off inside and tucked into the floor joists. Outside, it ran into a conduit and underground. Curiosity got the better of me, and I connected my signal generator to the end, sent some RF into it (I found ~350 KHz works well) and traced it by sweeping my Sony IC-SW7600 back and forth along the ground. Long story short, it ran about 350', off our property into a neighbor's yard, then abruptly stops, seemingly cut off underground. I've used this as an MW receiving antenna for the past several years with good results. Yes, I have other antennas, loops, etc. But I call this my "BUG" antenna: Beverage UNderground :)
This sounds like a wire that Hogan's Heroes ran to Colonel Klink's office to listen in to conversations. They listened on a coffee pot in the barracks, which had a speaker in it.

Who lived in the house before? Spies?


Back in the early 1960s, my uncle had a Brumburger Intercom connected to his neighbor's house. That required three conductors. Extension phone so the neighbor's shared one line?
 
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This sounds like a wire that Hogan's Heroes ran to Colonel Klink's office to listen in to conversations. They listened on a coffee pot in the barracks, which had a speaker in it.

Who lived in the house before? Spies?

LOL. The house was actually owned by the church next to us, which is accessible from the main road. It was the parsonage, prior to the church selling the house and dividing the land roughly 20 years ago. My best guess is they used the line for an intercom system between the house and church. Makes a good MW antenna, used against a nearby cold water pipe ground. I used it the first year after we moved. Main MW DX antenna is now a DX Engineering RF-Pro 1B loop.
 
My uncle gave me this Brumberger Intercom as a present. It had carbon microphones though, and you had a hard time understanding voices.

s-l640.jpg
Nice. I dismantled the intercom system in the house I grew up in as a kid. One of the old Nutone types with AM/FM radio built in, when I was 6 or 7. Got my butt spanked, parents weren't happy! :)
 
My childhood neighbor, now K8RY, was always taking the NuTone Intercom Master Station apart and replacing tubes and filter capacitors, and cleaning the switches. This looks like it:


I thought it was AM-FM, as he used to listen to both WKAR AM 870 and FM 90.5, and I remember hearing airplane fading and asked about it. He may have used an AUX input for the FM.
 
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