2. misc-audio
  3. 1032553346

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

Showing 2 responses by cdc

cdc
1,868 posts
 
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.
cdc
1,868 posts
 
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.
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