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Best Indoor Antenna?

R

Radio-X

Guest
OK, folks...been a loooooong time since I've been on here, but I have a pressing issue now that I'm a businessman who sorta wants/needs decent radio reception.

I have the fantastic Sony XDR-F1HD tuner which has never given me problems with the supplied wire dipole...just hang it up with two tacks and I'm good to go. Now, I'm on the first floor of an office building and surrounded by pine trees. I also have a class A station within eyeshot of the window along with several class D "Jesus-casters". Reception is marginal-at-best from class B's 40-50 mi away. Landlord's rules don't let me have a nice VHF antenna poking out of my office, so...

Am I best off keeping the wire dipole? How about some of the compact directional outdoor VHF antennae? Or the supposed "150-mile antenna" that is advertised on pretty much every broadcast webpage?

Your help is greatly appreciated,

Radio-X
 
The dipole that comes with the XDR-F1HD is too long and resonates below the FM band. You can optimize it for 88-92 MHz by reducing its length. Here is a way to this without cutting any wire:

http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/sdip.jpg

Tie the string so that the horizontal wires are 3″ above the mounting hole. The dipole bandwidth is too narrow to cover the entire FM band. Use a folded dipole instead.

To increase signal strength a couple dB for circularly polarized signals, tilt the dipole as described here:

http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/tilted.htm

A circularly polarized indoor loop that provides broadband gain over a folded dipole is described here:

http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/cploop.htm

Brian
 
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