Recommend a decent AM antenna for house

Ron3rd wrote:

WyoTraveler wrote:
Many of the receivers have a built in antenna. Suppose you could put a few winds around that built in antenna and string a wire out of the receiver. As a practical matter most of those AM receivers that are packaged like that are junk. My Sony is no different. Once you do get some sensitivity the selectivity is terrible. JMHO.

This one's a rather expensive Yamaha and does not have a built-in antenna.

I'm not questioning what you may gave paid for it. I paid big bucks for my Sony AM/FM theater sound for my TV. FM is pretty good. Theater sound is great. The AM radio is junk. Won't pick up a station 30 miles away. I wrapped some turs around the internal antenna and strung a wire out across the yard. It works but selectivity is bad also. JMHO. I also like to listen to AM once in a while. Buy an all band AM radio with some good sensitivity and selectivity. You will be much happier. In fact it will open up your world of not only local AM but some short wave above the broadcast band. You will be amazed what is out there.

Oh, a short story: Years ago the Detroit Tigers were taking the world Serious, or playing in the world series or something like that.

We were in the TV room at the campground watching and the sound on the TV sucked, I mean it was bad, I am talking about a blown transistor so it shounded.. Terrible....

Finally I said "I'll fix that" and headed back to my Rig, Got my "Boom Box" am/Fm/Cassette box and brought it back, WJR am 760 and Ernie Harwell

Turned the sound on the TV off

Every person in the room, from that day till they fired Ernie, that's how they listened and watched the games from that day forward.

At that time WJR was the only station in the US and Canada to occupy 760KHZ You could pick them up (Or to be more precise I picked them up) as I was leaving Florida on my vintage car radio.. CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER. alas, show is history now.

Ok, first I need to teach you antenna theory.. AM radio is 560 to aroudn 1600 KHZ, we will use 100,000 as our middle point to simplify math.
Wave length =about= 300/F(Mhz) or in this case 300/1 or 300 meters.
A quarter wave is thus 75 meters

You are NOT going to string 75 meters of wire inside your house. But you can outdoors... Bring the wire into the radio room wrap twice around the radio and then take it to a good earth ground.. Which way the wire points (N/S/E/W) will make a difference, so you might run two wires at 90 degrees and choose which one does best.


If you want an indoor antenna...
http://mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-1020C

Home made antenna 1

E-bay, I do not feel good about most of these

Home made #2

But nothing is going to beat the long wire I described at the top. Just make sure it does not turn into a lightening rod on you.

One option that might work.. A turn or two around the attic.

They are around, and some manfacturers provide external loop antennas that sit next to the receiver so you can rotate it. The problem is you are still not out of the nearfield noise.. I have a passive antenna tuner in the garage that is the size of a dinner plate and about 2" thick that you set next to the local antenna then tune this for peak signel through the radio and it works amazingly well, just cant remember the name.

Also look at C. Crane. They are one of the last companies that deals with high performance AM

WyoTraveler wrote:
Many of the receivers have a built in antenna. Suppose you could put a few winds around that built in antenna and string a wire out of the receiver. As a practical matter most of those AM receivers that are packaged like that are junk. My Sony is no different. Once you do get some sensitivity the selectivity is terrible. JMHO.

This one's a rather expensive Yamaha and does not have a built-in antenna.

Many of the receivers have a built in antenna. Suppose you could put a few winds around that built in antenna and string a wire out of the receiver. As a practical matter most of those AM receivers that are packaged like that are junk. My Sony is no different. Once you do get some sensitivity the selectivity is terrible. JMHO.