Outdoor antenna setup

A 120 mile range is going to require a LOT of tower height but it can be done; typically a professional is required for such an installation. Antenna requirement is a very high gain Yagi beam design for this distance. Rotor is only needed if you have more than a single location (city) that you wish to receive from, otherwise it's not needed. RG-6 is the preferred coaxial feedline. No previous mention of a head amplifier above, but you'll definitely need one. I use a high-gain Wineguard amp mounted at the antenna, with the FM trap switched OUT. You'll have provision to go directly into the amp with 300 ohm balanced flatline, then out to the drop with 75 ohm coax. Power for the amp comes from a power inserter box located in the house; the low voltage DC travels on the coax center conductor but is blocked from your tuner by the inserter box. Install a coaxial surge arrestor (properly grounded) at the coax just before it enters the house; maybe even a 2nd surge arrestor downline from that one. You should still disconnect the antenna from all inside equipment when away on vacation, &/or during any thunderstorm.
The tuner requirement is for high sensitivity; I suggest a Magnum Dynalab such as MD100 or MD90, or the more expensive MD102 is what I use, along with their Signal Sleuth, which is an indoor RF preamp that's tunable & has variable gain + a bypass switch. The Sleuth is very low profile & fits right on top of the tuner, if desired. Fanfare also has some good modern tuners available.
You are going to have to spend a considerable amount of $ to set this system up properly in order to receive from that great a distance, so be prepared.

Agree with most of the above, FM reception becomes extremely difficult past 60 miles. If there are ANY large mountains in the vicinity, it is worth a try to aim your Yagi at the mountain and see if you can get the bounce signal. This will often be stronger and more consistent than relying on atmospheric conditions and random luck to get you a strong enough signal. Good luck...

I'm sure that there are scientific ways to get the most from FM, but I believe there is room for luck and magic (this is a departure from my usual way of thinking) in getting it all to work the way you want it to.

Get a grounding block from Radio Shack ($1.99 or so). The grounding block mounts to the house and is grounded to a ground wire. You cut the co-ax and mount a connector and screw the co-ax into each side of the grounding block.
Prevents lightening from going into your tuner - a good idea!

While i forgot to look up line losses for RG-6 quad shield vs low loss foam twin-lead at work today, i just happened to run across an "antique" GC Electronics catalogue that i had handy from 1976 !!! In it, i can find a multitude of antennas that list extreme distance FM reception. One of them lists 220 miles on FM ( this antenna has a 110" reflector and an absolutely huge boom ), one lists 190 miles on FM with 29 elements / 111" boom, another lists 120 miles on FM with 21 elements on an 85" boom, another dedicated FM antenna lists 150 miles on FM using 19 elements, another lists 190 miles on a 95" boom, etc... Obviously, these ratings are probably best case scenario and probably just a bit optimistic at that. None the less, they state that reception of signals within the FM broadcast band is possible for WAY, WAY over 100+ miles. Obviously, this would require a proper antenna installation and both good receiving AND a solid transmitter signal to do so.

While some of you may find those figures hard to believe, i can at this very moment pull in a local low powered FM station that is appr 30 - 40 miles away from me with no problems whatsoever. While you say that this is NOTHING in terms of distance, i am doing it using a 6' piece of coax as an antenna with NOTHING connected to it. The coax is simply connected to the 75 ohm antenna jack and lays horizontally across a shelf. There is the typical "copper stub" exposed that one would normally have hanging out of an "F" connector and that is it. As such, i'm getting 30+ miles of FM reception in stereo on what is basically a 100% shielded conductor. In effect, this has less capture area than if i literally had a coat-hanger stuck in the antenna jack.

While it is true that i have relatively flat terrain between my location and the transmitter, if you can't get 100+ miles out of a KICK ASS directional antenna installation mounted outdoors and up relatively high and in the open, you better think about buying some better gear or moving out of the caves down in the valley. There is NO reason other than having a poor installation and / or poor quality receiving gear that you should not be able to pick up a multi-kilowatt station 100+ miles away. That is, unless you have other nearby stations operating on the same frequency.

If local stations are not on the same exact frequency but are close enough to cause interference to the distant ones that you want to hear, you need to increase the selectivity and adjacent channel rejection of the tuner you are using. You can do this via the use of what is called a "pre-selector" in the radio communications field. Magnum Dynalabs markets one of these devices and markets it under the name of "Signal Sleuth". This device tightens up the front end of the receivers by fine tuning the "Q" or bandwidth of the received signals. As such, you can effectively "null out" unwanted signals simply by fine tuning the filter. Keep in mind that you would have to fine tune these filters for each individual station or frequency that you were trying to pull in.

Besides being able to "pre-select" the quality of the signal being fed into the tuner, it can also increase the quantity i.e. "amplify" it. This should increase the signal to noise ratio and improve stereo separation.

For the record, i'm pulling in that local "weak station in the distance" using a tuner that i paid $29 for from a pawn shop in Indiana. Sean
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