FM Reception question, please

Its remarkable how much ridiculous misinformation is out there. The Magnum and Fanfare whip antennas are junk, and cannot have gain over a simple dipole. They're little more than overpriced wire rods. Real antennas take space, and there is no way around it.

Go to RadioShack, and spend $20 on their 6 element outdoor FM antenna, along with $50 for a rotator and accessories and mount it on your roof if you want decent reception, or mount it in your attic pointed in the direction where the majority of the stations are which you want to pick up. As a backup, keep the dipole and use an A/B switchbox if you desire a station where the real antenna doesn't point.

Beyond that, the simple "T" shaped dipole is not going to be improved upon by either of the two garbage antennas that the scam tuner companies are foisting off on unsuspecting consumers. If you don't mind the ugliness, get a really big antenna like the models from APS or alternately the TACO QFM-9 or Winegard HD-6065. The best FM upgrade I ever made was putting a real antenna up.

Actually, that isn't really true. A whip antenna is not better than a dipole in absolute terms. How you use and install the antenna might possibly make it better. I have a few tuner manuals that even do a decent job of illustrating it.

A dipole antenna has a figure 8 pattern in which it will pickup stations. Basically, there are two nulls off the ends of the dipole where it will not receive an FM station. This is actually a good thing, but does mean that you have to pay careful attention to the installation of even a simple dipole. The rejection of unwanted signals to the sides, even if small, could still be very beneficial. I have tried whips and dipoles in the same location, and the dipole will pull in more stations if you rotate it.

A whip antenna is not directional, meaning it will pick up all stations equally well in all directions. This can be good and bad. What is most beneficial is that a whip can be installed fairly unobtrusively in a high up location outside the house, which will, or course, always yield benefits. That is why Macrojack saw a gain increase when he put his antenna outside. I don't know if that antenna is amplified, but that would obviously do something as well. Antenna amplification obviously is not going to give you a cleaner signal, though.

A whip or a dipole or what have you cannot have gain, technically speaking. With my directional antenna I receive stations 50 miles to the south very cleanly. With whips and dipoles, mounted in the same location, I don't.

Ryan