Help need a Radio that picks up weak FM signal

[kenglish]

Are you under an HOA in your new location? That could affect your chances of installing an antenna.
Ask your station engineer if he has any contacts with local hams or radio DXers, who might have some suggestions. They would likely know the area, the coastal propagation, and maybe some installers.
Here's an email address for the local ham radio club:
[email protected]

 

[JBraddock]

I've found that the C. Crane EP-Pro portable radio is a reception champ on FM. It has a monophonic speaker with a stereo headphone circuit. It has a built-in standard whip antenna for FM and also a coaxial connector on the back if you need to upgrade to an external FM antenna. (It's also excellent at pulling in AM stations.)

 

[fybush]

Two thoughts here:

1. If what you need is a "mix-minus" from the studio (everything that's going out from the studio except your own voice), that's something you need to talk to your station's engineers about. Cleanfeed is bidirectional - it provides audio from you to the studio AND from the studio to you, and it should be a fairly easy task to set things up at the studio end so that the mix-minus is going into the Cleanfeed PC to reach you. You can't make that happen from your end, though. You need the engineer at the studio in Tallahassee to do it for you.

2. If you really want to hear the 98.9 signal over the air, it's very possible where you are, and shouldn't even require an outdoor antenna. My mapping shows that you should expect to get about 42-43 dBu of signal, which isn't anywhere near city-grade, but as you have found, it's generally usable on a car radio. A good indoor radio (look for a used Sony XDR-S3 or S10, for instance) with a wire dipole antenna will probably deliver a usable signal for you most of the time. But at 77 miles out, along the Gulf, you WILL have seasonal disruptions to the signal from time to time, and there's little to nothing you can do about that when it happens.

 

[bigic]

I'm starting to think I need to find an engineer or handy radio person who needs a weekend on the beach to come set it up for me !

This is a very good idea. I'm sure they would help you find an acceptable solution and save you from headaches that might occur if you tried to do this yourself.

 

[davideduardo]

IMHO a professional grade receiver AND an external antenna mounted outside on a pole and dialed in towards the transmitter site is your best bet, you are on the edge of the 50 Dbu predicted contour.

As mentioned before by Kelly, that only works if there is no delay on the air signal, either due to digital processing and/or as is common with talk shows and stations, a delay for the profanity delete.

In those cases, the audio may be many seconds behind "reality" when heard over the air.

 

[Deleted User]

Sounds like you're 90% there. If the station streams via any one of the common services, you could get an Alexa or Google speaker and just tell it you want to hear WXYZ. They practically give those speakers away anymore. Again, you wouldn't be able to use it for anything live, but if you wanted to just hear the station during off hours? Easy peasey.

My Alexa feed for WBZ-A is a good 90 seconds delayed

 

[Tammy Webb]

My Alexa feed for WBZ-A is a good 90 seconds delayed

We are WBZE Star98.9 Say "Alexa play star989"

 

[RF101]

The classic McIntosh MR-78 is a wonderful DX machine for analogiue reception. Magnum-Dynalab from Canada, both their discontinued models as well as current products remain an another strong alternative.

For remote monitoring Inovonics Broadcast offers a line of analog and digital receivers which lets you backhaul content over the internet or serve as an off-air pickup for a translator.. Their gear may not be quite über-DX-geek-sensitive but darn close.

You can test-drive their rigs here:

Live On-Line Demos via Web

For over 45 years Inovonics has maintained is position as a market leader of cost effective and innovative radio broadcast products. Inovonics specializes in...

www.inovonicsbroadcast.com

The location is Felton, California which is near Santa Cruz. I can hear Class A stations down in the Salinas Valley (Soledad, Gonzales) but some of the weaker translators don't make it as expected. ( The one exception for receiver placement is their DAB+ box, it is located in London UK.) Enjoy!

(I am looking for a source for prosumer grade FM yagi antennae with at least 9 elements but many CONUS suppliers have dried up. I might have to try UK, Italy, Spain or Japan as producers. Please add to this thread on the latter.)

 

[Deleted User]

OK it is obvious to me, and others that you have zero technical skills, so let me enlighten you since you missed the obvious.

1) there are delays in the air chain, every bit of processing, adds some, the time it takes to get the audio, once processed in the station to the transmitter takes time, if you also broadcast in HD the analog can be delayed up to 7 seconds to match the processing delay in the HD so that when you go in and out of HD reception mode as you drive down the street the audio transitions seamlessly.... is there a "dump button" on the board giving you the 7 second delay that can save you up to 325K dollars... If you have been to a live sporting event and brought a radio to listen to the play by play you will notice how long the delays are .. I am told there are 30 second delays at the remote site itself.... plus the uplink, downlink, uplink, downlink, processing at the network, processing at the affiliate, etc etc etc. Gone are the days you watched the hockey game on TV but turned down the TV and listened to the game on the radio because the radio PBP guys were better... nothing is in "real time anymore.

Since you failed to pick up on my saying Alexa delays things over a minute... and think about this, Alexa gets their audio from IHrt Radio's website, or the former Radio.com (Audacy or whatever ETM ooops Audicy is calling itself this week) so that audio is bouncing all over the country thru servers, buffering, etc etc etc.

Does your station have "music on hold" on its telephones? Call up and have them put you on hold, the audio into the phone should be near real time, then listen on your Alexa device at the same time and let me know how far out of time they are.... cripes the TV's in my house that are IP content delivered are a second off from room to room. Listen to your audio directly from your website or streaming provider too....

As I said, then Kelley, and then David, the days of OTA listening as an air monitor for remotes and working from home are gone.

As Scott Fybush said, you need a mix minus directly to you, which can be done with a POTS line (plain old telephone service for you youngsters) from the board ... this is what people use to take live calls on the air... mix minus is fed to the phone and it has worked for a long time.... phone calls are cheap, call in, use a headset, listen to the mix minus the engineer will set up for you, and feed your audio back using your current setup if that is working for you

 

[kenglish]

(I am looking for a source for prosumer grade FM yagi antennae with at least 9 elements but many CONUS suppliers have dried up. I might have to try UK, Italy, Spain or Japan as producers. Please add to this thread on the latter.)

You may have to build your own. Garry Smith of TeleRadio News in the UK says he can supply smaller antennas, or build them, but shipping is a major problem right now.
A Korner FM would be ideal.
I wonder if he could supply the detailed stuff (brackets and harnesses) as a kit, and people could locally source the aluminum.

 

[Mikey Radio]

@Tammy Webb if it comes to the point where you need advisce on selecting, mounting and installing an antenna, you might find the thread below most enlightening. Mind you, it's about TV antennas specifically and one Radiodiscussions.com member's quest to find and install a suitable one, it may take you some time to get through the entire 3 page saga, but it's worth it and an entertaining read IMO:

https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/antenna-tv-issues.734422/

 

[Tammy Webb]

OK it is obvious to me, and others that you have zero technical skills, so let me enlighten you since you missed the obvious.

1) there are delays in the air chain, every bit of processing, adds some, the time it takes to get the audio, once processed in the station to the transmitter takes time, if you also broadcast in HD the analog can be delayed up to 7 seconds to match the processing delay in the HD so that when you go in and out of HD reception mode as you drive down the street the audio transitions seamlessly.... is there a "dump button" on the board giving you the 7 second delay that can save you up to 325K dollars... If you have been to a live sporting event and brought a radio to listen to the play by play you will notice how long the delays are .. I am told there are 30 second delays at the remote site itself.... plus the uplink, downlink, uplink, downlink, processing at the network, processing at the affiliate, etc etc etc. Gone are the days you watched the hockey game on TV but turned down the TV and listened to the game on the radio because the radio PBP guys were better... nothing is in "real time anymore.

Since you failed to pick up on my saying Alexa delays things over a minute... and think about this, Alexa gets their audio from IHrt Radio's website, or the former Radio.com (Audacy or whatever ETM ooops Audicy is calling itself this week) so that audio is bouncing all over the country thru servers, buffering, etc etc etc.

Does your station have "music on hold" on its telephones? Call up and have them put you on hold, the audio into the phone should be near real time, then listen on your Alexa device at the same time and let me know how far out of time they are.... cripes the TV's in my house that are IP content delivered are a second off from room to room. Listen to your audio directly from your website or streaming provider too....

As I said, then Kelley, and then David, the days of OTA listening as an air monitor for remotes and working from home are gone.

As Scott Fybush said, you need a mix minus directly to you, which can be done with a POTS line (plain old telephone service for you youngsters) from the board ... this is what people use to take live calls on the air... mix minus is fed to the phone and it has worked for a long time.... phone calls are cheap, call in, use a headset, listen to the mix minus the engineer will set up for you, and feed your audio back using your current setup if that is working for you

wow I guess I am quite technically challenged
I don't respond well to negativity and I am not a fan of listening to alexa or google or apps for Radio
Just an old school girl who is Blessed to still be relevant in this modern world!
No none of our 5 stations are on hold on the Vonage phone system

 

[frankberry]

If you can't install a big (and high) outdoor antenna, the only realistic option is for the station to install a system to feed you a mix-minus (everything except for your voice) over the phone.

 

[Deleted User]

If you can't install a big (and high) outdoor antenna, the only realistic option is for the station to install a system to feed you a mix-minus (everything except for your voice) over the phone.

Great minds think alike....

I miss the days when people who worked in the business had a clue about how things worked, had a basic understanding of the air chain, etc.

I would love to take some of today's "Talent" and put them in front of a patch bay and 2 RTR Scully's and have them show me how to do a seven second delay.

 

[kenglish]

Some stations discourage people, even their engineers, from "thinking outside the box" of their immediate job.
Of course, I remember in 1976, DJ Frank Hayes came to WPTX for a job interview. The station manager sat him down in the Production Room for a chat.
The on-air DJ ran in with a cart , and said he needed someone to call the Weather Bureau and get the current forecast.
Frank, who had never been in WPTX before, grabbed the cart, bulked it, loaded it, set up the board, glanced at the phone list, called the forecaster, and recorded it.
Handed the cart to the manager, and was hired on the spot.
I remember the same manager interviewing for a Chief Engineer. He rejected several applicants because "their hands were too clean".

 

[Deleted User]

did I ever tell you the story of the board op that had been on site since 6 AM, that called me at 130 to tell me we were off the air.... I was at my day gig and had to walk him step by step from the board, thru the racks, and finally clipping headphones onto the terminal block to see if there was audio being fed to the loop line feeding the transmitter... this was after I had him call the transmitter site and have the monitor tell him we were down....

Since we were co-located, and paid the other stations engineer a retainer, I called him to see if he was on site and if he could look at it for me until I could get there...... he replies that we have been off the air since 2 AM, and he already ordered the parts and we would be off the air for another 24 hours..... but for the last 8 hours I had a board op in the station going about his job like nothing was wrong because he was not smart enough to listen on his car radio on the way in to make sure we were OK, he didn't call and verify from the monitor we were at proper power and pattern, or turn up the radio in the office to see if he could hear the station..... these people walk among us !!!!

 

[Kelly A]

I miss the days when people who worked in the business had a clue about how things worked, had a basic understanding of the air chain, etc.

It might be because you're assuming people posting here work in the business. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but many of the folks posting around here are either former radio people from back in the day, hobbyist's-DX'er's, or radio nerds. Tammy is excused from knowing technical menus ha, because ultimately that's not what she's paid for. Assuming she's paid and not a volunteer.

 

[K6JHU]

"(I am looking for a source for prosumer grade FM yagi antennae with at least 9 elements but many CONUS suppliers have dried up"

If you somewhat mechanically inclined you can build your own. Specs (depending on number of elements) can be found at a calculator at Yagi Uda Antenna (Rothammel) There are others on-line. Put in center frequency and number of elements and it will do the computations.

BTW, I have discovered that a 4 or 5 element antenna is actually better for FM than a 9 element since it is not as directional. For a 9 element you might want a rotor.

 

[JBraddock]

I miss the days when people who worked in the business had a clue about how things worked, had a basic understanding of the air chain, etc.

The common generalization is that engineers have limited interpersonal skills. Most of the time, it's at least partially unwarranted, and experienced engineers learn to deal with personnel whose technological comfort level ranges from limited to non-existent. It's just part of doing a good job. As mentioned, we have a varied audience here, some of whom come looking for answers or information from a position of relative inexperience. We - especially the current pros here - shouldn't drive them away. This isn't Twitter or Facebook.

 

[Mikey Radio]

Tammy is excused from knowing technical menus ha, because ultimately that's not what she's paid for. Assuming she's paid and not a volunteer.

The common generalization is that engineers have limited interpersonal skills. Most of the time, it's at least partially unwarranted, and experienced engineers learn to deal with personnel whose technological comfort level ranges from limited to non-existent. It's just part of doing a good job. As mentioned, we have a varied audience here, some of whom come looking for answers or information from a position of relative inexperience. We - especially the current pros here - shouldn't drive them away. This isn't Twitter or Facebook.

Some of the finest on-air talent I've worked with were completely non-technical and in some cases were crappy even at production. I've worked with amazing sports broadcasters who couldn't follow the simple (to a technically-minded person, at least) instructions on how to set up the remote gear on their own, so they used their cell phone to broadcast a game (which worked OK, as they had a board op back at the station to insert spot breaks, etc.). At the first station I worked at, the AM transmitter was a beast from the 1950's with 4 big, glowing tubes visible through the front glass and was operated by the airstaff. When powering up in the morning from the "flea power" transmitter used overnight or when lowering power at dusk, one had to work through a series of switch throws and dial adjustments. While everything was labeled and there were clear instructions and meters to indicate nearly everything one needed to know, it still came to the point where they installed a big red light that basically indicated the station was off the air and that you'd either done something wrong or didn't have the various stages dialed in correctly. I'm guessing the engineer probably begrudgingly installed it, but I'm also guessing his phone rang a lot less and the station got fewer "You're off the air again!" calls once he did.