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Antenna questions

Hi, I have a roofmounted FM-only omnidirectional antenna. It works great except for one station (important to my wife) which suffers from multipath distortion/static, so I am looking to install a directional in it's place.

1. APS is mentioned here, but their website says the antennas are non-returnable. I think it's pretty important to be able to try the antenna in your attic before installing on the roof, and return if necessary! Does anyone sell these antennas with return privileges?

2. The Radio Shack website has a chart that shows specs for their various antennas. "FM Gain" is 2.2 on the largest of the their antennas, and only 1.0 on the antennas (including a directional FM-only) that I am considering. What is up with that? Aren't directional antennas also high-gain? Should I worry about it? Since signal strength isn't a problem, maybe just a unity-gain directional is enough?

Thanks for any ideas.
ehart
tweed
25 posts
 
To answer some of Eric's other questions. Yes, The Winegard
is a serious antenna. I'm using the HD6065 with a Fanfare
FT-1A tuner and it works extremely well.

Get the antenna up as high as possible but be careful not
to get near power lines! (Where will the antenna and mast
fall if the wind blows it over?)

Also, if you live in area that is prone to thunderstorms,
you MUST ground the mast and line - and unplug it from your
tuner during bad weather.

As long as yoou are up on the roof, install a rotor (or
rotator). It can really make a difference and it's cool
watching your 10 foot antenna rotate ;-) I use a Channel
Master 9521A.

John.
ehart OP
215 posts
 
Hi John,

Thanks for your reply. This is the Winegard antenna I am looking at.

It's cheaper than the APS-9, and it's bigger, but not as big as the enormous APS-13. It has about the same gain as the APS-9, per the APS website. It doesn't have as high a "front to back" ratio -- do I care about this? Does this mean the APS will be better at dealing with multipath distortion?

Anyone know of FM-specific antennas other than this Winegard and the APS antennas? I haven't found any others...

Thanks!
tweed
25 posts
 
I wouldn't get too wound up in the spec's - they are all
good antennae and will serve you well. Buy what you can
afford. Get it up as high as you can. Use a rotor.

Happy listening.

John.
sean
6,231 posts
 
Eric: Front to back ratio would come into play if you are trying to null out stations on the side of or to the rear of the direction of the station that you are trying to pick up. Gain is how much the signal is amplified once it pulls it in and front to back ratio is how well signals of to the rear of the antenna are rejected. Antennas are typically optimized for one or the other as doing both extremely well would be a tough thing to do. This has to do with the spacing of the elements. One would think that the antenna with the highest forward gain would have the tightest rejection of the back end and vice-versa, but it doesn't work that way. As "Tweed" says above, once you've gotten to this level of antenna, it is pretty much a matter of optimizing the antenna installation itself and going from there. Sean
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