FM antennas.............Does ANBODY still make them?

Thanks folks......I KNEW you guys would have answers!!.....I did find Denny's last night, sent him query and he responded this morning. He does offer what looks to be a nice, FM only antenna, HD2500 and his site has plenty of good info. I'll check out the others before making a buy..............Due to my location I don't expect miracles, what with the trees and the mountain, neither of which can I do anything about. However, my portable radios do pick up stations across the dial, so my thinking is that with a REAL tuner and a good antenna I shouldn't have too much trouble................I'll post feedback once I get everything rigged up....................Thanks :)

Thanks mental, just checked them out.........I think ultimately what I'll end up doing is picking up a good omni along with a good directional yagi since this tuner has two ant inputs. there may be some stations that work better with one than the other.

Thanks again mental........I do know that you have to properly ground any outdoor antenna............lightning can be unpleasant :) I did stop using surge protectors on my gear a while back. Read too many bad things about them. If there's a storm, I shut my gear down and unplug....safer that way......I'll check out the ones mentioned......thank you :)

af3000

Yes, there are hundreds and no I did not have the time to view all of them. However the vast majority of the ones I saw were indoor, omni or combination TV antennas. A small handful of basic, small yagi's for FM was about it. What I'm primarily interested in is an outdoor, dedicated FM directional, yagi type antenna. They used to be made aplenty by all the major antenna people........cable killed that years ago.........I have found that there are still a (small) handful of what look to be good, dedicated FM yagi's out there, but you have to look...........and ask around, as I have here.............It largely depends on your location. If you're reasonably close to a major city or located in a flat area with good line of sight for miles, then I guess anything would suffice. I'm 70+ air miles to either Baltimore (East) or Washington DC (South East) .......and there are a couple of mountains between us, so I need something a bit better than a table top TERK or wall mounted dipole.

tastyfreeze

Yeah that lighting thing can be a problem........Florida being the lighting capitol of the world..............We get our share here too, just not as often as you do..............Nothing gets your attention like a gazillion volts of electricity dropping by to visit outside the house.

Likely installation will be atop my screen porch, gable mounted, which would get me up maybe 15-20 feet. That would keep the coax run to maybe 30-40 feet from my system and keep the antenna a few yards from neighboring trees.............Thinking of mounting an omni higher still, in the attic. An omni wouldn't be as powerful and attic installations aren't optimal, but it gets me another 10 feet of height and that might be useful on some stations. Tuner has dual ant inputs, so one yagi + one omni should cover the bases about as well as possible.........Thank you folks. I learn things every time I come here :)

Bruce, I think you're messing with me....................Nearest mountain is about a mile, due East and deeply forested..................I don't need reception THAT bad!!  LOL.................but yeah, it's a nice idea :)

Thanks Chris, but I'm a thousand miles north, Western Maryland.....Probably not worth the trip, but I'll stop by next time I'm in the neighborhood :)

LOL

Interesting.................I've visited FmtunerInfo a few times and saw the link to Carver, but haven't checked it out yet............sounds worth while. Bob Carver was a pretty smart audio guy years ago, so his insight on antennas is certainly worth reading..........FmTunerinfo is where I first discovered that most all of the major players now only build TV ants.........Many of them will pick up FM also, but I'm sure it's an after thought......a whole lot depends on your particular location and topography relative to the stations you might want to pull in.

Funny, I spent my career working on super stealth radio gear for the military and intelligence agencies, but antennas were never part of my job, so I don't actually know much more about them than anybody else :).........never too old to learn..........Thanks mental..........

Attic installation would get me up a little higher, keep the cable run a few feet shorter, protect the antenna from weather and tree damage.............AND I wouldn't have to worry about falling off the roof!!

I'll have to take a tape up there and see how much room I'd have to for rotation...................might be the best and safest option outside of a mast and I don't know if I want to go that far.

Finally got the Onkyo 9090 II in the system. It's hooked up to a TERK, for lack of anything better at the moment. Works well, sounds pretty good, but I'm only pulling in a few fairly week stations, as expected. Anxious to hook it up to a real antenna as soon as I finish my remodeling project and have time for something fun.

Read a bunch of reviews that XM SQ sucks..........what's your experience???

Loomisj

Yeah, that's what I read online.......too bad, I was tempted to go that route. They only have so much bandwidth and they've crammed too many channels into it trying to to widen their subscription base. I guess it works for those who only listen with earbuds and don't care about SQ...........I can turn on one of my portables and get that :)

Think I'm going to go with Denny's antenna service in Ithaca Missouri. He sells what looks to be a nice multi-element yagi style, FM antenna. In my location I'll really need a good unit. ...............Have the tuner hooked up to a Terk, but that's next to useless here. I get almost the same reception with it disconnected, about 1 db different.........I'm only picking up a handful of stations and nothing I really want to listen to during the day.