New Antenna for FM Radio

 I've had this FM Radio Halo Antenna for a couple of years, and had it hanging in the garage for my "Shop Radio". I didn't think it worked very well, so I used a vertical whip on a magnetic mount. 

I had some whips, NMO coils, and a magnetic mount "in stock and on hand", so I picked a combination that would work acceptably for the frequency range of 88MHz to 108MHz.

You've seen these before, I'm sure. That's it, the black rectangular thing (the mag mount base) next to the coil of wire, with a grey cone and a whip on it.

That was OK, but I decided to make a "folded dipole" antenna and try that. The dipole has some broadside "gain", which allows me to receive the weaker stations to the South down by Denver compared to the vertical.

This is a *very* simple antenna to make; just some wire, and a little 300 Ohm to 75 Ohm "balun" transformer to convert the 300 Ohm BALanced impedance of a folded dipole to the 75 Ohm UNbalanced coax input of the radio.

Took about 45 minutes to measure and cut the wire, solder on the balun, make and install the coax, and staple it to the drywall.

This works much better than either the halo antenna or the whip antenna, in this situation, and now the stations to the South come in stronger, and the receiver locks on the stereo signal better than it did before.

But I still had this halo antenna for the FM band, and a coax going through the foundation into the basement workshop.

Sooooo....needing a better antenna for the nice FM stereo in the basement, I dug the halo out of storage, and addressed the shortcomings it had for outdoor use here. I took it apart, cleaned all the areas that got bolted together with ScotchBrite and alcohol, then reassembled it with some Jet Lube copper-based anti-seize compound. Then I made a bracket for it out of some aluminum angle, cleaned all the parts again, assembled it all, and shot it with a coat of self-etching primer. After that cured, I painted it with some of the Rust-Oleum "Truck Bed Liner" paint I had, and put it in the sun to bake. The Jet Lube will stop any oxidization, and the heavy coat of the bed liner should seal the connections from moisture.

So here it is, hanging on my mount from the eaves.

And you cab barely see it from the street, so SLW won't squawk too loudly.

The messy coax install will be cleaned up as soon as I find my "Coax Nails" in the correct size.

I have ones for larger coax, but can't find my box of RG-6 size ones. 

And yes, I saw them last week while rummaging around for something else. Next time I see them, they'll get put with all the other 75 Ohm coax stuff I have.

So how does it work? Wellllll.....pretty "meh" to the South as it's on the North side of the house, below the roofline. Some of the stations I received before in the basement on the whip are weaker with this antenna, which I thought might be the case. Stations to the North come in stronger, but there's not much out that way that isn't "local", so it's a net loss of coverage.

I may wind up fabricating one of my favorite antennas for the FM Band, a simple quarter-wave vertical. I'd build an FM Band Lindenblad, but SLW might not be too happy with that.....