Antennas for FM Radio Reception 

Thanks for this video, helped me select a home FM antenna which is a largely ignored product in today's digital streaming world.

Those goofy T-wires provided with the purchase of a receiver work fine for most people in or near urban areas looking to get only a couple of favorite channels, which is most people in the country now. We who live in rural areas appreciate your information to help us getting those distant broadcasts.

Very glad to know such a group exists. Thanks for sharing informative content! Wish you all good health and long life!

This is the best video I have seen on the subject at hand. Well done.

I'm 32 and i would had loved to be in that room. Thanks for the demo.

I am a licenced Radio Amateur and should be aware of the majority of this information. However I found it very interesting and enlightening, thank you for the presentation mate!

thank god for youtube i was looking for stuff like this explained easy

Thank you for your advice about a whip antenna, and about what its optimal length should be. I have a Sony receiver with a 75 ohm coaxial connection. I found a 30-inch (75 cm) whip antenna with a 30 inch cord, and it works perfectly ... no amplifier needed! I propped it up in a window with a venetian blind, and I now get great reception of an FM station I like, that is 60 miles away! A cheap and very effective solution ... thank you!

I learned more about FM in this video than trying to research it on my own in years. Thank you Bob for your knowledge I am going to have to try your methods. The higher the antenna the better the signal, so true. DXing is awesome.

Thank You for sharing this information i love Radio. Good to see Radio lover's talking about FM antenna.

Thanks, just what i was looking for to get my new HD kenwood radio to stay locked in, Im gonna check on the round one.

Brilliant conference... greetings from Montevideo, Uruguay...!!!

Thanks for sharing such an interesting video. I am from Cuba and I always was a FM band lover. I had several antennas to "catch" radio stations from Florida and one of my favorites was a 7-element yagi, along with a 3-step booster which I put right on the mast about 1 foot from the dipole. It was sealed and protected from rain. Oh man! That setup worked like a charm!!! Power supply was down by the tuner and I used the same 75 ohm coaxial cable to power up the Booster. Amazing guys! I wonder how many stations I'd get here with such a system!!! Okay, thanks again and till your next video.

I mounted four of these folded dipoles vertically and used RG62, 93 ohm cable with a balun at each antenna. I used a spectrum analyzer to phase each antenna and use the correct length of RG62 to raise the impedance of each antenna to 3oo ohms unbalanced. When the antennas were connected together, the unbalance impedance became 75 ohms. Since the FM broadcast band is rather narrow, I could easily phase the antennas Outstanding reception!

I just thought about building a radio antenna at my property in Park county, Co., was sitting at Chatfield reservoir listening to am radio, thought "this is quaint, I like AM radio" then the lightbulb went off, I could erect an antenna and get really good radio signal up there, long story long, found Bob here explaining proper signal capture and antenna positioning and he's is an engineer so he knows his stuff, thanks Bob!

Excellent, very informative, thanks much!

I'm fortunate to live in a signal-rich urban area and pull strong signals with just an old 300-ohm floppy dipole strip, which I reposition, depending upon atmospheric conditions. That, and a receiver with a good FM stage, has served me well these past 60 years. Our village is the western-most portion of San Diego suburbs and it's a straight shot up the coast to the high antennas sited in the mountains east of the Los Angeles Basin. As I am 400 feet from the Pacific, there is virtually no multi-path phenomenon, because I am sticking out from the continent enough to allow line-of-sight between my cheapo dipole ribbon and the transmitters high atop the coast range of mountains to the north. So I get good signal strength and quite a bit of separation, even though it's almost 100 miles between us! My Fisher receiver, circa 1978, was made with Avery Fisher's patents in Japan and has one of the best FM stages I've encountered, but my two Marantz receivers were equally as good, too. This gear benefitted from American know-how and Japanese expertise in manufacture. I believe that accounts for the popularity of the big super-receivers of the 1970s today. They offer enough stable power to drive even an inefficient speaker system and great FM reception, too. I found no superiority in my high-end Tandberg separate components with their miles of interconnecting cables which may or may not have been picking up RF signals, given the traffic density here. I know it sound like heresy, but I think receivers with their short coupling paths between sections result in a cleaner signal than individual amp-preamp-tuner arrays and all the potential corrosion effects at contact points in this marine (saline) environment. At least it provides less chance of tripping over yards of cables and neatens up your listening area. Wives and sweethearts like the sound, but often balk at the hardware scattered about. I first dropped a needle on a record in 1940, so I've been around the platter several million times! Thanks, Robert, for a thoroughly professional and useful presentation. My brother Jimmy was Chief Plant Engineer for Pacific Bell here and had 12 patents of his assigned to AT&T over the years, so I have some experience with your area of expertise.

Nice video! Thanks very much! Didn't know that circular polarization was pretty much standard. Stove-Pipe Dipole Armed with that information about circular polarization, I built a dipole out of two pieces of 8" (trade size) / 7" (actual size) galvanized HVAC duct. Each arm of the dipole is 690mm or a bit over 27" each. I put a 1" space between the ends where the 75 Ohm CATV cable connects. I did not use a balun of any sort, as the two pieces of stove-pipe make a very good match to 75 Ohms at the middle of the FM band, and I was not too concerned about disruption of the pattern because of feed line currents. Because of the large 7" diameter of the stovepipe, the antenna is fairly broad band. The antenna seems to work well. I have made some measurements like those you give in your video, so far just for the stovepipe dipole (which I hung vertically in my attic and connected via 75 Ohm CATV cable to my radio in the basement). Have not yet made measurements on other antennas on hand. Noise in FM Broadcast Reception This was all in an effort to clean up some "steam" or "scratchiness" that seems to be always present in music received through this radio. I am a bit perplexed how to get rid of it. Even though my radio shows a good strong signal (as I assessed by measuring the voltage at the S-meter output of the FM IF chip), I still hear some scratch in the music. Do I not have a strong enough signal? Perhaps the scratchiness is because of the demodulation method used in the radio? The radio, by the way, is a Kenwood KR-A46 AM-FM stereo receiver., about 1987 vintage. It is frequency synthesizer-controlled, and I have not attempted to align it, though I do have the factory service manual that describes the alignment procedure. I just picked it up at a thrift store recently, so I don't have a great deal of experience with it. Maybe a fully analog FM receiver would have less "scratch"? Thanks again for the very informative video. Good engineering! Max

Great video! I have a number of high quality component FM tuners fed by a variety of antenna systems in different rooms of my house: Horizontal folded dipole, vertical dipole, and my garage tuner has two yagis facing west (to Cleveland, Ohio) and south (to Kent, Ohio), switched to provide the best tuner input. We live low in the valley of the Chagrin River so FM reception is...challenging.

This was very helpful. Thanks!

Very informative! After watching this video I went home and straightened the elements on the Stellar Labs 30-2435 "round dipole" that's been sitting in my basement, unused. I also flipped the mast mounting bracket on the center support and slid it to the far end so it can be easily mounted to a mast, offset at a right angle. Mounted in this configuration I assume the built-in transformer will be more susceptible to water intrusion, so I will bypassing it and using a pigtail balun.

I live in a very remote, fringe area. Stacked yagis on a 70' antenna tower were my only option.

Fantastic video. Thank you very much.

Dear sir, thank you for the information shared. I am also a FM lover from mumbai, India.

Just awesome. I never would have interrupted.

Two more steps in complexity, for another 6dB gain, would be to have two vertical dipoles end-to-end with a shorted quarter-wave stub between them. I used that for pirate broadcasting long ago. It worked very well. The impedance around the middle of the stub is 200Ω balanced. If you use a half wavelength (times whatever the velocity factor is) of 52Ω coax to make a balun to feed it there, it works out perfectly.

this was pretty interesting to watch

Excellent video. Props to the video editor.

awesome stuff!!

Let me add.....True circular polarized transmissions have equal power in both the V and H planes. And they transmit with either right (RH), or left hand (LH) circular polarization. The reason they are more immune to multipath is because if we say start with a RH polarized signal, the line of sight signal hits you with a RH polarized signal, however, if any of the transmitter's signal bounces/reflects off of a nearby object, the reflection signal changes the direction of rotation, (meaning in this case where we started of with RH circular, it will come away from the object it reflected off of, being LH). And the receive antenna (being a RH circular design) is immune the LH signal.

🔥💓🔥 Great video. Great channel. I'm in. Worked great for my radio. 🔥💓🔥

Hey Bob, great information! A few years ago, I took a dipole driven element off an old TV antenna, and used some of the old ch 2-6 elements to make the poles closer to the FM band, then cut them to 98 MHz, and mounted it vertically on a horizontal stand off well below my current Winegard TV antenna. For some stupid reason, I used a 4:1 balun, as I can only assume I was thinking of the impedance of the folded dipole antenna. I've since removed the balun, and noticed a little improvement in reception; but, I'm really intrigued about using a folded dipole (and 4:1 balun) for the increased bandwidth it's supposed to deliver over the standard stick dipole. Do you think it would be significant? The Stellar Labs 360 seems like a low cost to experiment with, but I'm wondering about the total length of it when the curved poles are straightened out. From what I can find, it seems like it's a bit short, and may favor the upper part of the FM band. Is there any way you can measure the antenna, and post what the total length of it would be, straightened out? If it's a bit short, Stellar Labs makes a yagi with a folded dipole driven element that is a bit more, but may be more tuned to the center of the band. Anyway, thanks again for the great info, and I hope to see a future video on AM antenna systems (like why an FM vertical works so much better on the car radio to pick up AM stations than any AM loop antenna I've tried for my Sangean in my camper, and how I can make something that's omni-directional, external, for AM, and that'll work as good as what's on the car... and I know the impedance is an issue, too...). Thanks!

Nice discussion. Thanks!

I think I found my new club. Radio antenna enthusiasts.

I've got. 50 years in the radio business, with 20 years installing FM / TV antennas. Even though I have FIOS, I still have antennas on my roof. I get better quality HDTV off my antennas than I do with Fios. Just recently I've been experimenting with an out door FM antenna and found this information very useful. The first thing intone morning I will flip my folded dipole to the vertical position as you advise. I'm looking forward to good results and will,let your know. I forgot all about the circular orientation of FM. I am anxious for good results. If you want to know something about radio ask a Ham!

I took the cheap T wire antenna that came with the tuner and cut each leg to 29 inches then stripped both ends of each leg and twisted them together to make a 59 inch folded dipole tuned to 98mhz. I then mounted it vertically in my attic and made sure the center conductor of the tuner was connected to the upper leg. I used 300 ohm flat line to connect it directly to the f connector on the back of the tuner without any chokes or baluns and it pulls in anything within 60 miles crystal clear and partial signals from 70-80 miles The folded vertical dipole works great and has a lower noise floor than a standard dipole . I only had 3-1/2 feet of space in my attic so I drilled a 1" hole in one of the wall top plates and dropped a foot or so of the bottom leg down it to keep everything straight and vertical. As far as omni directional goes you cannot buy a better antenna

Bob, thanks for the nice video and education. I want to make my own long range folded dipole FM antenna to cover 90 to 108 MHz stations. I understand that on horizontal it works as dipole whereas in vertical it is a "kind" of omnidirectional, correct? What should be the length of the aluminum dipole on each sides when I put in vertical position? Does the formula 468 divided by the frequency works for the vertical position as well?

The turnstile antenna mentioned at 3:00 and again at 10:40 can be made to work more-or-less omnidirectionally if the section of twin lead connecting the two crossed elements is 1/4 wavelength long. At 98 Mhz this would be about 28". It's called phase-quadrature. It works - the reception pattern is a cloverleaf. The length shown on the vid appears to be random. These things can be pretty frequency-critical.

Was having problem with my Denon receiver, in terms of signal. Now I shall try the vertical antenna. May be signals improve. Thanks.

Very good lecture!

thank you for this video im very happy cos im busy whit at outdoor antena now

Sadly long out of production, but the BIC "Beam Box", basically a *selectable/ tuneable* Yagi in an enclosure the size of a small phonograph or turntable, has worked very well for me and a few of my friends back when we lived in apartments in areas with generally lousy FM reception and where outside or attic antennas were not allowed. Lower signal output than you'd get from a dipole (for one friend of mine, adding a signal booster between the Beam Box and the receiver made a huge improvement), but the selectable elements and bandbass filtering means that you can often greatly reduce or eliminate interference from adjacent stations. The FM-8 was the plain-Jane, 300 ohm version, the FM-10 was prettier, with smoked plexiglas top, and had a 75 ohm output as well. Last time I looked, these were fetching a hundred bucks or so on Ebay. If you cannot put up an outside or attic antenna, then the Beam Box is probably worth the money. FWIW, I live in hilly New England, and I only listen to low-power college and public radio on the left end of the dial.

Thanks for the video. :-)

Great video, good info. Just one thought. You mentioned circular polarization, and stated that it helps with minimizing multi-path interference. Well, it does - except - for that to happen you have to receive with a circular polarized antenna. Circular polarized broadcasts have the advantage that you can orientate the receiving antenna in any polarity and still receive the signal - However - either V, or H polarity of receive antenna (using only either of those), will be 3 dB down from that of what one would get if they used a circular polarized antenna for receive.

very good, easy to understand video

Bob, is there a way to tune out adjacent channel bleedover on certain stations with an FM antenna? I've used rabbit ears, and an outdoor antenna. I live 20 miles from a station I like to listen to, and it gets adjacent channel bleedover from 3 stations in between the one station from time to time.

Thanks for your efforts Bob. At the end of the video you mention a segway in to part two. Was this not shared? Also, if I put an omni-directional (like the round one) or a bi-directional (like the "plus sign" shaped one) in my attic how does the length of the coax cable affect signal strength and will a powered signal booster help?

When I lived in north east Missouri in the late 80’s I had a radio shack tv antenna on the roof and got weak stations 300 miles away now in north west Houston Texas I can’t get a station 15 miles away on antenna is there signal boosters available that will help with digital- ,analog always came in but week

Bob, great video. Read through most of the comments and replies. Enlightening. My situation is that I have a metal roof on my house that interferes with FM reception. I saw Alan Nyhius' question and your reply below suggesting to put a vertical dipole about 1 m from the house on the side where the station's transmitter is located. I assume attic with metal roof would not be good. Should I try to put vertical dipole about 1m from house?. I only want to listen to one station and it is a repeated NPR station with antenna 5.7 miles away with power of 0.08kW (The FCC card says it is vertically polarized if I am reading it correctly). I have an old Zenith MC7030 receiver/tuner with the screws for 300 ohm antenna, no coax input. Should I use an adapter from screws to coax?, or should I use another type of wire to string out to the north side which will be about 45' away from receiver where metal roof comes down and ends? It is a gable roof and I could locate antenna at eaves or lower. Eaves are high, about 21' off ground (House on pilings). Thanks!

Thanks for your video.

A little clarification. The folded dipoles described in my last comment each had about 288 ohms at resonance. Using the RG62 raised the impedance of each antenna to 1200 ohms. Connecting each antenna to each other lowered the total impedance to 293 ohms at a resonant frequency of 98Mhz (the exact middle of the North American FM broadcast band).

gracias por compartir esta información casi nadie toca este tipo de temas saludos desde Mexico

Great video, keep it up!🌐

Bob: Thank you for this video. Couple questions: 1) Where can I purchase a folded dipole antenna for FM radio reception? 2) I plan to mount it on my TV antenna mast. My TV antenna is a "Televes 148883 Antenna Ellipse Mix ". 2) Where on the mast, relative to the TV antenna, should I mount the FM dipole. Many thanks. Jim King, Saratoga County, NY

I would like to find a source for the antenna you started speaking of at 4:59 in the video. I've been looking for a good antenna to mount in the attic. BTW, thanks for posting.

Thank you very much! I am erecting a multi-antenna mast and I now know how to address the fm band. Has anyone ever tested a multi-band discone antenna on the fm band? I am also curious to see how it receive UHF tv. That one is going on top. Merci VA3KPG

Bob, I'm a novice at this, so I'm working with trial an error. It appears that the length of the antenna arms seems to matter. I've heard 29" and 30" in different videos for making antenna. The aluminum S unit/dipole that is better vertical then horizontal (05:35 in video) is clearly longer then 30" for each arm in the T. Is there a ratio that one tries to use to maximize signal strength reception? Basically, is more metal better then less metal for each arm? Would 60" arms of the T be twice as effective as 30" arms? I'm hooking up to a radio receiver in an apartment/office and there is no access to the attic, roof or above for an FM antenna to be mounted to anything. I stuck with 10 foot ceiling perhaps 20-25 feet of the ground, being on a second story of a two story building. Any thoughts on how to optimize this with out mortgaging the house to do it would be appreciated. Thanks

Love this educational video

6:05 The ones I've had experience with are called "quasi-circular." Each antenna in the bay is a half-wave dipole, with a difference. Half of each element is a horizontal half circle, with the second half at a right angle to the first, one end pointing up, the other, down

I am new to radios just today I have started my project antenna for my sw radio think in fm there are not many that I could pick but after watching this man be I should give fm as well a try. Can some tell me in India will they block fm stations broadcasts from a city to another city?

I made a few comments here, but I DID want to thank you very much for the idea of orienting a simple dipole vertical. With all my antenna experience in industry, I just did not consider it before - not sure why not. Anyway, I live half way between New York City and Philadelphia, and can receive both well if I use an omni antenna. I bought the folded dipole that was bent into a circle, like the one you showed, and it worked OK, but the vertical folded dipole worked a hair better. I can receive about 85+ stations, and the ones that come in, in stereo, with a rating of 9+ (on a 1-10 scale, 10 being the best) I receive about 60 stations. Thanks for the tip!

I wonder if a marine antenna 60inch would work indoor for FM radio reception.

Very good information

Where could you purchase an Antenna like the one shown at the 2:15 mark in this video? Is there any videos on RU-vid that shows how to make one?

Thanks a lot!

Hey Bob!! I liked your video! I made my own 147 cm dipole and it works fine! But it`s not omnidirectional, I need to know the exactly dimentions of de circular antenna because I`d like to make it myself. Sadly ,it is not available to buy to buy in my country. Here in Argentina FM broadcasting signals are horizontal, so putting a vertical dipole for comercial FM does not work.

I remember as a boy AM had alot of static space on the band I would pick up many faraway stations at night CBC back then would go off the air and NeW Orleans would come in . CBS radio mystery theater if you remember that program with EG Marshall when the program would fade out you heard a mystec sound effect to the program when hearing the static.

After using a 6 element yagi and a rotor, nothing compares.

I'm 35 and I never knew this niche hobby exists. I acciddntally found this video as I was looking for antenna building tutorial for my old Pioneer kp500 car stereo. That unit is a super tuner az they say but I don't know what that means lol.

How do I make a small loop antenna on the 433mhz attached to coax

Where can I purchase the single T straight antenna that you liked? I'm having a hard time finding one that isn't several hundred dollars.

Newbee here. Can I purchase a good outdoor FM antenna or are there patterns for building one? I do not know how to connect the antenna to the lead going down. I am not even sure where to purchase materials any more as most DYI stores have closed in the area. I have a Channel Master TV antenna on a rotor for TV, but it is only for UHF and my wife sorely misses FM. I can have a second lead coming down for the FM. I have seen some circular and some horizontal flat (e.g. like the Channel Master one), but I have seen mixed results on all. I had to take my antenna down for termite tenting, so before I put it back up, I want to plan (e.g. old guys on 2 story houses - scares the wife). Any recommendations would be helpful.

Does a folded dipole FM antenna work when hung vertically? Or only for horizontal mount?

Unfortunate the cheap stock wire antenna was discounted and not tested. Even a guy sitting there asked. Knowing if the test results were negligible or drasticly better would be very helpful in deciding to spend the ~$20 on a better antenna or just using what came in the box. Next question is- Would reception of stock wire antenna results be better with leads verticle (one up and one down) same as other antenna was tested instead of hanging horizontal as in video?

Can someone tell me what are the components of the fm antenna? A trap? I am restoring an old tube radio and it has a loop in the back of the console but I want to upgrade that to something much better. the whole 75ohm vs 300 ohm thing is a mystery to me also. when I bought my house there was an old big tv antenna not being used... can I just run a coax cable from that thing? thx!!

very intersting topic

Hi Bob Klacza. I'm Ben Coleman from Brisbane, Australia. after watching this video so helpful but I'm trying to get a radio station that isn't streaming online yet called 100.9 ZZZ FM Lismore. How do I get the station from my household which my place to the station in length is 126.35km in a straight line.

The one test that you didn't do was to take that double turnstile and mount the mast horizontally. That way you will have one element vertical, and the other horizontal.

My FM radio has a single wire coming out of it. With the coaxial cable there are two wires - which of the two coaxial cables is connected to the single radio wire?

Coaxial dipole antennas (Flowerpot antenna) are cheap, easy to build and have omnidirectional performance, my airband specific variant works very well on FM broadcast 👍

I was hoping for more information on automotive fm antenna.

What kind of outdoor fm antenna do you recommend?

Interesting Video Bob. I have an issue in my new home and I am not a very well versed electronics guy. Have been trying to get FM reception in my shop building on an old Nikko am fm receiver. FM Reception is horrible with a great deal of static. AM reception no problem. The shop is one of those corrugated metal buildings, roof and sides. I tried inside with that "winegard" hd 6010s I think you were displaying in the video and it produced no improvement. Is the shop shielding any FM reception and do I need to go outside with an antenna? I then worry about grounding issues if I go that route. thanks for any help !!

So at 9:46 in the video, the relatively simple dipole id the most feasible and best in its class. So where do you get one? Thank you.

Help me, please. How does his dipole antenna compare to the cheap twin-lead ribbon antennas that was included with the purchase of a new radio ?

The argument that there are FM stations transmitting in circular polarisation seems to be correct only for United States. In Europe, e.g. Poland there is NO circular polarisation in use. We have H and V stations ONLY, because of interference and bandwidth availability in adjacent areas. So - vertical dipole won't work in H (it would somehow, but its gain is gonna be marginal). This strategy causes some problems with multi-path in cities, but results with greater number of station allowed to transmit. So its in fact a win-win situation.

Very informative video. But it's incorrect to say that all FM Broadcast stations transmit with circular polarization. Here in Canada, most low power stations (under 3 kW) are usually vertical-only polarization. For example, CINQ 102.3 FM.

Very nice

QUESTION FOR ENGENEERS: DOES LENGTH OF CABLE FOR FM MAKE NEGATIVE DIFFERENCE? HOW LONG CAN FM ANTENNA BE AND STIL HAVE SIGNAL WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT DECREASE???

Thanks

Why not hang the turnstyle with one element vertical?

So the 2 take aways here are that dipole antennas are good but should be mounted vertical for FM. I thought terrestrial noise bouncing off vertical structures such as power poles, trees, buildings caused a problem, or maybe is it just negligible?

Where can we buy the vertical one, the third one he showed? I cant find it anywhere.

I reckon antennas are just way over my head.

Folded dipole. How about a 4 or 5 element yagi? You need a rotor but you get some gain and front to back ratio

I have a Magnum Dynalab verical from the 90's in the attic, and want to run a 100 ft coax down to the basement, F type connectors both ends, what coax should I use? 50 ohm or 75?

Hi Bob. I just purchased this FM antenna a few days ago. Have you ever heard of this one? FM DX Antenna Co Long Range Outdoor Vertical Reception Antenna 88-108 MHz. I am hoping it will work well with my Sangean HD Radio.

100mhz 4 element yagi antenaa dipole length in cm.or inches how much length?

what polarization is the most used across world

My old tv antenna has one of those looped type elements on it. Does this interfere with digital tv signals? Or am I way off?