FM Antenna placement, wiring


I've just bought myself a nice big-bucks (hah! $60) FM tuner here on Audiogon. My house is sitting on the top of a hill, although there are BIG trees on all sides I think that's not supposed to matter much. However, I live 25 miles from a college town with a few radio stations and 45-90 miles from Big Cities with dozens of radio stations each. To compound matters, my listening room is in... the basement. And, as you'd guess, reception, well, it sucks. OK, I know I need to have an antenna, and I know it has to be up high. I have a Terk, which does pull in some signal. I think I could arrange to put it up in the attic, where I would think I'd get much better reception. Question#1: what do I use to extend the signal? Can I just take some RJ6 cable and put ends on it? Do I need something to help the signal down the wire?

Question #2 (well, I guess it's #4): Given I cannot mount anything on the outside of the house (my house is on the National Register and we are trying very hard to eliminate anachronistic touches such as antennas), what are my options? I"d like to pick up Washington and Richmond stations if I could. And I suppose I'd be willing, if reluctant, to put an antenna up in one of the trees (65 feeet up?). Is this going a bit too far?

Of course, one should interpret the fact that I only invested $60 in the tuner to mean that my LPs are a ****LOT**** more important to me.
blw
i put stacked directional antennas in my attic. works just fine. i could probably get by with an omni but my stations all came from one general direction and the directional antennas have better signal strength. my experience with the small amplified amntennas are they work best in urban areas where the signals are already strong.
Please refer to this thread: lots of relevant info here for you.
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ymisc&1030012710&openusid&zzBigo&4&5#Bigo
Simple answer is any passive antenna in your attic will likely outperform any amplified antenna in your basement. Use quad shield RG6. You may need transformers like the ones that come with your VCR if your older tuner only accepts 300 ohm flatlead. You can get a pretty good Channelmaster omni-directional (cross configuration) antenna for about $15-20.
This is how I did it:
Radio Shack has 25 foot, 50 foot and maybe even longer quad shield RG-6.
My girlfriend helped me out last weekend. I got the PR-6000 (?) directional antennae and first compared to the Fanfare vertical whip antennae. Both on the roof.
Then went into the attic with the PR-6000 and had it near the vent. Supposed to be a 50% loss in signal strength but didn't hear much loss - if any. Used the Fanfare as a reference.
So I drilled a hole in the attic floor, ran some electrical conduit from the attic to the basement through the living room wall (no insulation in the walls), and dropped the RG-6 through the conduit to the radio.
stick it in the attic, i have a radio shack uhf/vhf and it works great even picks up tv stations that almost don't exist
As a follow up. The $35.00 PR-6000 Winegard antennae has been working better than the Fanfare FMG even though the Winegard is in the attic. I used the Radio Shack quad shield gold cable and noticed the Fanfare has really thin (single shield) cable. Maybe this has also helped on the static issue.
My Marantz ST-6000 tuner has inputs for A/B antennae so easy to switch and compare between the two.
Biggest improvement is less static. Since I burn music off the radio this is very good. A good antennae may very well be the best place to start to improve FM radio before considering expsensive tuners.
Thanks folks, especially CDC. I'll hit Radio Shack very soon and drop some RJ6 down from the attic. Since I already have it, I'll connect my little Terk antenna up there and see how it goes. If it's not enough, I'll go looking for one of those Winegards.