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In Reply to: FINALLY!!! 30ft tower with QFM9& a rotator posted by dudeupshaw@cogeco.ca on September 30, 2006 at 20:08:34:
My QFM9 is going up tuesday but it will be on a tripod or mast on the roof which should put it the range of 30 to 40 feet off the ground with a rotator as well.In my basement the antenna hanging from the ceiling gives me a 5 to 6 on 10 signal strength meter reading on my fav station, so if I can get 8 or more for the same station, it will have been worth it.
Follow Ups:
Well,it is done... QFM-9, Ken W's low loss balun, belden 7915A, heavily modified and perfectly aligned tuner Sony ST-S555ES. This FM chain is amazing, no noise, no hiss and wide sound stage. It took me 4 years to get to this point. But I can stop now and enjoy.
Oh and as perdicted the signal strength meter now reads 8.5 where it read 5 before, full quieting on all the stations I care to listen to.
cheers
paba
If that's the one I read about on the Web, just how much difference does this make? Did you buy it made or kit or cobble it together yourself completely? Can you give Web URL, please?Thanks.
I'm using the RS FM specific antenna and having a blast with the newfound reception. Also using RS higher quality balun, RG6 quad shield, and current baluns per Brian Beezley.
Hi,bought the balun from Ken W...here
homepage.mac.com/kenwetzel/Low_Loss_Balun.htmcoax is Belden 7915A
Does it sound better than a good quality commercial version?
Hi
what is a good quality commercial version? All the commercial ones I've seen are like 2$. haven't done any real comparisons because I can't go up on the roof and do a swap that easily since I don't own a ladder that size.Never saw any specs for the 2$ units, are they flat on the full 88 to 108 Mhz? I suspect that is where the difference is but you should email Ken and ask him what the delta is between the 2 options.
He told me what the essential difference would be for reception, after detailing the numbers and the theory: for difficult stations and distant stations a significant improvement, but for closer stations probably not. Bottom line seems to be that if I already get it in stereo, I'm not going to notice much difference; had I only received scratchy stuff in mono, probably a lot. My problem isn't the latter, so I'm going to just stick with what I have.In fact, since the new RS antenna and the minor Beezley mods, I'm not having ANY problems whatsoever! Was just trying to figure out if there was any major benefit left in fooling with this thing before I brave crawling into my attic crawlspace to place it.
Ken's design uses the same essential Radio Shack parts as an ordinary Radio Shack balun, probably only improved upon by the gold coating in the RS Gold version for whatever that's worth. The difference is the small coil he constructs out of the Belden wire and the Amidon core, which he has taken pains to match for this purpose.
I have a lot of respect for Ken for his prompt, imformative and honest reply and the pricing he puts on his efforts if you want to buy either the kit or the finished product.
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