Cheap DIY FM Antenna

Gdoole, I'm having trouble locating 300ohm cable. Any suggestions? I was told normal speaker red/black wire would do. Around here, we don't have a radio shack...

CMk - I would just build it with speaker wire - the thing about the 300 ohm cable is that the wires are separated by about a half inch - not sure what this does - but you could simulate this by separating but holding them at half inch with duct tape/electrical tape. I have no idea what the spearation or 300 ohm bit is about - it might be totally unnecessary for short runs. I'll bet it will sound fine with speaker wire. I've built this twice - once with a fancy wooden frame made out of dowels and molding - then the super fast way to build a stationary one - just put four nails in the wall and wrap the wire around in the square configuration... You live somewhere that doesn't have a Radio Shack??? Don't tell me you don't have Starbucks either?...
Note that the ant design has two variations depending on which part of the spectrum you are trying to pickup... I went for the smaller college radio/NPR version.

I am planning to do a DIY antenna with the first set of plans to use with my Tivoli table radio. The instructions are really not clear but I am just going to attempt how I think it is done and see how it works. I will wrap the speaker wire around the X shape (made of 3/4" MDF) then pull tight and tape the two wires together. Then I will just route the two ends toward the center of the X and tape there, strip the ends and connect the balun directly to it. Then just connect an RG6 coax cable and run it down my wall to my radio.

Congratulations for living in an area where FM is still worth listening too. Marketing driven greed has killed the vast majority of them nationwide.

Well I have just recently had a renewed interest in terrestrial radio in my area (Dallas/Fort Worth). Things were getting pretty bleak there for a while and I had pretty much stopped listening to any FM broadcasts and had Sirius installed in my car. Jagger was taken off the air and replaced by Lex and Terry; 97.1 The Eagle (the only remaining rock station)was replaced by another station playing mexican music.

Now jagger is back on mornings on a dedicated talk station. The first non-commerical country station has popped up 95.3 The range. 97.1 the eagle is back on the air and even the classic rock station 92.5 has changed to a better mixed format of Southern rock/country. We also have a great community radio station 89.3 that has a great variety of formats from blues, reggae, country and many others. Classical 101.1 is a great classical station as well. Now we need a good jazz station and a better oldies station that focuses more on the golden oldies and we would have it all. Next I plan to get an HD radio tuner to check out the available digital stations in my area.

BTW that antenna worked fairly well. I was able to pull in 89.3 clearly which I was not able to do with the little string antenna it came with. I am still unable to pull in 95.3 which is disappointing but it is one of the weakest stations in my area.