Any good ideas on an FM amplified antenna?

drew spelts

Whenever I have a question about something I need and can not find the answer myself I know that I can always turn to the Polk Club for guidance.

I was looking for an antenna that will only be used for FM reception boosting. I live in Nebraska and the Good radio stations are about 60-70 miles away in all the wrong directions of course. Well My HK has a hard time staying locked on to most of these signals which is very anoying. Ebay had some good deals but shipping was a total killer and the ones that were amplified were going for big bucks.

I need an amplified antenna that is mounted inside only and will cost me less than 30 bucks. It also has to be able to hook up to my receiver with a single cable because I do not need any more mess behind the receiver.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly apriciated.

madmax

Sounds like a big order.

If you can pick up decently on a portable radio you at least have a chance with your receiver. If not you would need a pretty big outside antenna. Remember, amplifiers only amplify (and not much) so if the signal isn't there you are not going to amplify it.
madmax

dorokusai

Lost cause. If you want better reception, you need an antenna on the roof.

steveinaz

dorokusai wrote:

Lost cause. If you want better reception, you need an antenna on the roof.

+1, yep. I'm 80 miles from Tuscon and tried just about everything on the market (at the time I was in an apartment, so outdoor antenna was a non-starter).

How about an attic mounted antenna? Rat Shack makes a nice $45 outdoor antenna that can be attic mounted--hang on to the receipt, if it doesn't do the trick, return it.

sucks2beme

+2 on the attic mounted antenna. The local classical station was always hard to get. Nothing beats the passive gain of a directional antenna up high. I've got one in my attic. Amplified antennas did nothing for me but piss me off. Try one, return one.

bknauss

The iBiquity guys say you don't really gain much if anything from an amplified antenna. +1761928 for roof antenna.

mrmusicman

Screw FM... and look into satelite radio,I suscribe to XM and am very satisfied.I have never had any good results with amplified antennas.

opus

dorokusai wrote:

Lost cause. If you want better reception, you need an antenna on the roof.

Don't want to jump the thread Drew, but can you use the same antenna that you use to get OTA HD signals to pull in fm signals? If so, how would you hook it up?

drew spelts

I have never bought a HD TV Antenna but I think some can get the HD signal plus FM signals [opus]. So basically I have to put a big antenna in the attick to get better reception and the amplified scenario will most likely not work very good. Well that sucks..... See I do not understand how a 10$ radio can get in the rock stations but my $700 receiver can not with a 6 foot antenna pinned up on the wall. I saw that someone had a nice HK tuner for sale in the flea market about a month ago but it went for about $110. he claimed that a 9" antenna could pick up more than any other tuner in the store. Maby I should look into finding a seperate tuner. Hell, I don't know. I ust wish It would pick up all the good stations around here. I am very frustrated and XM satellite radio costs money every month and I do not like to pay every month for something that should be free in my mind. Like when I bought a Tivo it was great for the first two trial weeks but then when I found out that you had to pay for a service it went right back to the store. They asked why I was returning it and I told them you had to pay for a service and they acted like I was an idiot. In my opinion if you buy a $100 piece of hardware and then have to pay service that is rediculous because it would not take much for them to provide the service for free but they are all theifs and the prices are outrages. Maby if it was like $3.00 per month I would have kept it but not for I believe $20.00 per month. Just stupid in my opinion. Sorry for the rant.

drew spelts

I remember reading an artical back in 1996 or close to it about DVD players and the future. Some company (probably sony) had a grand idea that people would buy the DVD players then they would buy the DVD's. The catch was that if you wanted to watch the DVD's there was an internal modem (Dial up, which ment that you had to live in a dial up friendly city or pay long distance every time. Guess they didn't think that through!!!) the player would call a service provider and somehow charge an account that was billed to you. Then you could watch a movie and hey if the disk was scratched and you did not know it, poof there went that money spent on a service that was not absolutely necessary in order for the machine to work. Imagine how that would have affected video rental stores around the country..... Some real greedy **** out there and I don't think they deserve what they steel from the general public. Cell phones are another story because the give you the phone free for starters and about every 3 years around here you hear of strong winds blowing over a cell tower. So they have some upkeep isues but radio should always bee free unless there are no advertisements. I thought that Sirus was the one that supposedly had no advertisements. Like when I go to a movie theater (which is very rare since I have such a good HT) I do not want to watch advertisements for Trucks and chevy what the hell is that..... I pay big bucks to see advertisements,,, NO thank you. Now they got so damn many of the DVD's made so that you can not even press any fast forward buttons or the main menue button while the advertisements and FBI warnings are rolling. Hello,,,, STUPID! The day I see a Chevy advertisement on a DVD is the day I start writting letters of protest for invading a market that is already plagued with **** that keeps me from getting to the movie for so long that I can put the movie in, go take a crap (and whipe) then cook a bag of popcorn and pour a big glass of whatever I want to drink and the movie still has not gotten to the main menue. I remember the first disks being able to push root menue and whala you were there man, it was fantastic.

Soccerplyr

"I remember reading an artical back in 1996 or close to it about DVD players and the future. Some company (probably sony) had a grand idea that people would buy the DVD players then they would buy the DVD's. The catch was that if you wanted to watch the DVD's there was an internal modem (Dial up, which ment that you had to live in a dial up friendly city or pay long distance every time. Guess they didn't think that through!!!) the player would call a service provider and somehow charge an account that was billed to you. Then you could watch a movie and hey if the disk was scratched and you did not know it, poof there went that money spent on a service that was not absolutely necessary in order for the machine to work. Imagine how that would have affected video rental stores around the country"

It was called DIVX. The brain trust behind the idea was Circuit City and a major law firm in LA. You have the basic premise right. What they wanted to do was sell movies that you could watch once, price about the same as a rental ($3.99). If you wanted to watch the movie again, your account would be billed(if I remember roughly $2). You could also "buy" the movie by making up the difference of what the disc would cost had you bought the DVD. A major drawback (one of many), all the films were 4X3. The brain trust felt that the American public hated the black bars, so this would be their niche to gain market share. All the players played both DIVX and standard DVD's so it didn't hurt to have the feature. At the time I believe that the Panasonic DVD/DIVX player was one of the best on the market. The companies making the players were Zenith, RCA (Proscan) and Panasonic.

Back to the topic- I use a set of amplified rabbit ears and have good luck. The is a pirate radio station here in San Diego that transmits a sign that reaches about a square mile. I can pick it up from about 20 away. Cheap, so you might give it a shot.

drew spelts

what the heck, I guess I could always return it if necessary. Thanks for the actual story, I knew I wasn't smoking crack.