FM aerial question

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geekIT

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#199183 7-Aug-2016 21:11

Would this work?

My Sony receiver sits right alongside my Sky aerial cable.

This is the fairly hefty white co-ax cable that most of you will be familiar with.

My question: If I were to peel back a bit of the cable's outer coating to reveal the shielding, could I attach my single wire FM aerial to that woven mesh?

Seems like it could be a good FM aerial that's going to waste.

Regarding my use of FM, it's not a big deal for me to listen to radio, but it'd be handy to be able to get decent reception on a few channels,

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illicit

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#1606328 8-Aug-2016 13:28

No, the shielding is an earth essentially.

Rabbit ears with the old ribbon cable work well if you have lying around.

Failing that see if the is an old aerial outlet nearby and connect the FM cable into the center pin of the outlet

richms

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#1606330 8-Aug-2016 13:30

A mess of an antenna will give crap FM results. Yeah it may have the hiss go away but signifigant multipathing will really screw the sound quality. I got a proper FM antenna on the roof aimed over the hill at the skytower and the difference was massive to the clarity. Does nothing for the content.

Richard rich.ms

DarthKermit

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#1606351 8-Aug-2016 14:35

Is a UHF aerial good for picking up FM radio frequencies?

Rikkitic

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#1606368 8-Aug-2016 14:48

UHF is cut to the wrong lengths. Might be better than nothing, might not. A piece of wire is likely to do better. An old-fashioned VHF aerial is much closer to FM frequencies, though still a little off. We live a long way from the transmitters, no unimpeded line of sight, but I have been able to get pretty good FM reception with a home-made half-wave dipole (two equal lengths of wire, each cut to 1/4 of the middle of the FM wavelength, strung under the eaves and fed with a piece of 75-ohm coax.

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Yoban

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#1606409 8-Aug-2016 16:09

I installed one of these a few years back: http://www.matchmaster.co.nz/digital-tv-antennas/03mm-1efm/ and has worked like a treat.

Without hijacking the post, I have noticed that GeorgeFM (96.6) has started to produce background static which was one of the reasons for it in the first place - anyone got any ideas (connections etc have all been checked, other FM stations no issues)?

Have a read of this too, if you have not already http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?topicid=84377

richms

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#1606421 8-Aug-2016 16:22

Mine is more like this size - http://www.matchmaster.co.nz/digital-tv-antennas/03mm-5efm/ but the wires fallen off it and the thing keeps spinning around on the pole so its useless at the moment.

Richard rich.ms