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Maybe this is a silly question buy I'm new to this: I live in Los Angeles and I get the jazz station (88.1,) but only in mono. If I get a better antenna (right now I'm using the $24 Radio Shack model) will that allow me stereo reception? Or will it need to be significantly higher to receive stereo?
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IIRC they dropped the 6 element job, why I do NOT know!If it's a uhf/VHF TV (and FM) directional item it's probably 'cut FOR SF's telly' - mainly, and not very good down at 88 meg, or below where VHF TV no longer goes I ween.
The distances of most of the great 'bay area/plus' Universities' and their FM stations, if worth it, suggests to me that you really do need to consider something of an FM-only nature AND a rotator.
Map desired stations onto a cheap topographical map (with contour lines) and your site, this will tell you how much of the potential 360 degrees you need to cover.
DIY skills? Hack saw and pop rivetting? It may be that an array of 2 bespoke 4 element 'long-boom' yagis is worth the work.
WarmestTimbo in Oz
The Skyptical Mensurer and Audio Scrounger'Still not saluting.'
Read about and view system at:
Fishfood, the small end of any multielement antenna is always the end pointed toward the transmitter. I guess most of us just assumed that if we didn't know anything about antennas, it's sort of like pointing the small end of anything toward the target, but it always works. The big end is the reflector, which performs as its name suggests, so the actual signal collector (driven element) is always in front of the reflector. The others in front of the driven element are a little shorter and serve as directors, i.e., they direct more signal to the driven element.
Dale
Hi, Fishfood:I did not see an indication of which tuner you are using.
Want to fill us all in?
Thanks!
No, it's definitely a stereo broadcast. I'm using a Marantz 125 tuner. When you say point toward the tower, do you mean the front or the rear of the antenna? I'm going to raise it as much as I can and replace the wiring. Right now it's sharing wire with a Directv line then the analog signal is split off 10 feet from the tuner. My guess is that's not the best way to do it, huh?
Try unhooking the Directv stuff right away. See if that changes anything. I'll bet that's one source of your loss of signal. Your FM antenna should NOT be sharing signal with anything else.BTW, if you're using the RS TV combo antenna, that one does NOT work very well compared with their true FM specific antenna. I made the switch and was amazed at the difference.
If you live in the area with any kind of outside antenna you should easily get stereo. On the other hand you may have multipath interference which can be hell in big cities.
I'd echo the other poster about the probability that this station IS broadcasting in stereo. One indicator of weak signal strength is mono reception or drift in and out of stereo. But that can also be a problem with the reception and discrimination from a weak or distorted signal at the receiver end.Easiest thing to do is to try various methods to boost the signal.
1) direction - find out where the transmitter is and rotate your antenna
2) boost the signal strength with a coax amp (some say no, but my RS amp works great for me)
3) improve your antenna's capacity by various tweaks
4) change your cable to low loss RG6 quad sheild, shorten the runs if possible, and improve your connections
5) get a good balun, even the gold version of the RS is an improvementEverything I just said can be found on Brian Beezley's FM site. Don't worry about the graphs and the math, just concentrate on what he says about the simple tweaks, directionality and power of various antenna configurations.
I'm using the same antenna to superb results in the SF Bay Area. My stations may be nearer than yours and there are undoubtedly other differences too. But all of the above works for me to improve my signal significantly. And I"m enjoying stereo....
I don't know of any stations broadcasting mono, but being at the (poor) low end of the dial you might make sure they're broadcasting stereo.If they are, then your problem is signal strength or a misaligned tuner. Is your antenna directional? If so, point it at the station's transmitter. Next, check the connections and cable qualtiy between the antenna and the tuner. If those things don't work, then your antenna will need to be higher or better.
The reason I brought up the tuner is that the station you seek is at the low end of the dial. You would expect a tuner drifting out of alignment to have the worst performance at one end of the dial or the other. You also may have a grossly insensitive tuner, but I doubt it.
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