FM radio with good reception
Printed From: Unofficial Allis
Category: Other Topics
Forum Name: Shops, Barns, Varmints, and Trucks
Forum Description: anything you want to talk about except politics
URL: https://www.allischalmers.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=149989
Printed Date: 15 Nov 2024 at 8:33pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 11.10 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: FM radio with good reception
Posted By: HD6GTOM
Subject: FM radio with good reception
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 3:48pm
| What's out there guys? I am down in the bottom and a regular fm radio will not pick up any oldies stations here. I've thought about trying to run a copper wire up the outside of the building and across the peak of the roof. Might take a small pair of vicegrips and attach it to the radio antenna. Would prefer to buy a great radio instead. This is for working in the shed. Could a made myself clearer on that. |
Replies:
Posted By: steve(ill)
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 5:14pm
|
does the truck radio work if you move around the yard to a different location ?? ------------- Like them all, but love the "B"s. |
Posted By: HD6GTOM
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 6:29pm
| No it doesn't. I have a Dodge van that sorta works. Both Chevy and ford trucks. |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 7:06pm
| If it happens to be a steel shed run the wire up and attach it to the roof. Then your whole shed should be an antenna. Wire antennas do work well if they are long and high enough, a wire hooked to my steel shed did wonders for a short wave I use. When they plugged Saddam's sons I knew it 12 hours before anybody else did because I listened to BBC the night before. |
Posted By: Brian Jasper co. Ia
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 9:38pm
|
Get a good quality car stereo. My shop is metal on one side with all metal roof and I can't even get 1040 WHO whose tower is about 20 miles as the crow flies away on any sort of portable. The fender radio on the tractor works good. It doesn't get long range reception like in the car, but it works good around here. ------------- "Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian." Henry Ford |
Posted By: steve(ill)
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 9:44pm
|
that's why I asked about the TRUCK... most have decent radios... have heard of mounting them in the barn with a converter....... but if you have NO RECEPTION in the truck as it moves around the yard, then there might be a bigger problem... If your in a HOLE, the waves might go right over your head.... antenna up HIGH on the roof or tower, or similar might be a good idea. ------------- Like them all, but love the "B"s. |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 11:17pm
| 1040 would be AM no? Totally different animal than FM. |
Posted By: shameless dude
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 11:48pm
| kinda like TV reception, 4 channels from Omaha at 20 miles away, and 3 channels from Sioux City 75 sum miles away and we gits better reception from Sioux City! radio stations are no problem here |
Posted By: shameless dude
Date Posted: 30 Apr 2018 at 11:48pm
| you could subscribe to sirrus radio! |
Posted By: Dipstick In
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 4:42am
|
AM radiowaves follow the curve of the earth better than FM, that means you have better access/reception with AM and for a lot longer distance. I could pick up 890- WLS out of Chicgo in El Paso on most evenings. Fm being a little higher frequency has a tendency to be more "line of sight" than AM, and that means the curvature of the earth, hills, depressions, etc. affect reception more. ------------- You don't really have to be smart if you know who is! |
Posted By: shameless dude
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 7:06am
| radio sigs also bounce off the clouds |
Posted By: Stan IL&TN
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 7:28am
|
Got two choices and that is to run a wire outside the shed and the other is to mount a car antenna on the outside and run the wire to the radio. A metal shed acts like a faraday shield and will block most all signals. ------------- 1957 WD45 dad's first AC 1968 one-seventy 1956 F40 Ferguson |
Posted By: Tbone95
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 7:33am
AM radio signals much more so.....and they bounce of the ionosphere
 |
shameless dude wrote:Posted By: Tbone95
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 7:34am
OK, dumb question......If the whole shed becomes an antenna, why bother to take the wire up to the roof? Couldn't you just hook it to the wall which is connected to the roof? The guys in the shop here just run a clip to the conduit and it helps a lot.
|
Posted By: jaybmiller
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 7:38am
|
All radio waves are 'line of sight', nature of the beasties so unless you get an antenna higher than the 'wallow' or valley you're wasting money on ANY radio. Depending on the weather(high altitude) AM will 'bounce' but not FM. I finally got fed up of NO oldies on FM and the near constant ramblings of talkover the music krap on AM..... So, I grabbed one of the free laptops I got, loaded it with 400+ of 80,000 songs I have on the main PC.. I run 'Winamp', select 'random' and can listen all day,night....to MUSIC I like. Considering the amount of welding stuff and dust and other 'airborne' krap..I'm amazed the laptop still works. When it does, well I got 4 or 5 more in the basement I can use. jay ------------- 3 D-14s,A-C forklift, B-112 Kubota BX23S lil' TOOT( The Other Orange Tractor) Never burn your bridges, unless you can walk on water |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 7:31pm
| Tbone, if ya got a new shed with each piece of metal making contact and ground with the next it will. If ya got an old rusty thing odds are it won't and with the wire going to the roof you are already higher to start with ergo better signal. Am radio waves are in a sine like waves on an ocean FM are in a straight line that's why with AM when you put a car in a building you lose the part of the sine that is above the roof = signal fizzles but FM will continue pumping out the boogie baby. But whoever said it AM will carry farther. It amounts to the same thing as electricity and AC DC. Edison electric plant couldn't be more than a few miles apart and Tesla figured he could basically shoot AC in lightning bolts from a central tower he built his in New Joisey but scared hell out of the populace and he abandoned it. Look up Tesla Death Ray. |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 7:41pm
| Tesla had the better idea but Edison got the credit, in aviation Curtiss and Beloriot had the best idea but Orville and Wilbur got the credit. Just more of your tax dollars at work. |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 8:09pm
|
Stan come on over some evening and I'll turn oh my shed and short wave and let you listen to Radio Hanoi, Radio Moscow, BBC just about anything you'd like to hear. All this and right straight through my Faraday shield. |
Posted By: HudCo
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 10:38pm
| i have a car stereo in a fender mounted box with the antana onthe box hooked to a mower battery and a battery tender hooked to it in the shop it pickes up 10x more than any other radio s even if they are outside and this one is in a corner of the shop idont understand it |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 11:38pm
|
A radio can not pull any more than the antenna can deliver. It can clarify, refine, and separate the frequencies better from one radio to the next but the signal is only at a certain strength depending on the wattage of that particular license to broadcast. It's all in your andetandy pal. |
Posted By: shameless dude
Date Posted: 01 May 2018 at 11:41pm
| I had an old clock radio (AM/FM) and couldn't always get most stations to stay over an hour at a time. was at a garage sale one day and saw an old HI/FI console record player AM/FM player. bought it for a dollar, and that thing could really get the radio signals from all over and stayed on one channel all day long in any weather. no extra wire attenna attachted. |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 02 May 2018 at 12:28am
| Your clock radio is an example of cheap parts and building in todays world, the HiFy is an example of good parts and building in yesterdays world. I would guess the HiFy was an expensive one for its time when new but like I said a big part of the difference your seeing in the two is because of the antenna. |
Posted By: Stan IL&TN
Date Posted: 02 May 2018 at 7:36am
Well you can come over to my work and I can show you a faraday shield that as soon as you close the door the radio goes silent. My own barn's siding is well grounded and it pretty much kills any radio reception in there but it varies I'm sure. ------------- 1957 WD45 dad's first AC 1968 one-seventy 1956 F40 Ferguson |
Posted By: Tbone95
Date Posted: 02 May 2018 at 9:09am
|
Posted By: CaseyCreek
Date Posted: 02 May 2018 at 10:59am
|
There are gobs and gobs of good antenna options for FM and AM. I use an old tv antenna for mine. If you really want to put up something that you know will work, you will have to get it outside of the shed and pipe the signal down using coax. I have had really good luck with anything from Winegard. I looked online for a few seconds and found this page which has a few options which sound like what you want. https://www.solidsignal.com/c.asp?c=3841&d=AM-FM-Radio-Antennas" rel="nofollow - https://www.solidsignal.com/c.asp?c=3841&d=AM-FM-Radio-Antennas ------------- D17 Series III,D17 Series IV, 185 |
Posted By: CaseyCreek
Date Posted: 02 May 2018 at 11:18am
|
If you don't mind me asking, what kind of sound quality are you looking for? You didn't say if you were piping the signal into an old hifi system or if you just want a three-inch speaker out of your radio. If you just want to have a good old fashioned shop radio sound, I personally haven't used a better radio than a Grundig, but they can get a little spendy. If you can find an old GE Superradio (spelling?) they were awesome and they had really good AM and FM reception. I bought my mom a Radio Shack portable because it had really good reception and big knobs, but I don't recommend that option because the darned thing is always losing its presets. It sounds really good, though. If you are lucky enough to find a yard sale hifi system at a yard sale for a few bucks, even better. Most of the better portables as well as even cheap hifi systems will support an external antenna, so again, you have lots of really good choices. ------------- D17 Series III,D17 Series IV, 185 |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 02 May 2018 at 4:18pm
|
Tbone, then you should have mentioned that before you asked. Stan, do tell. Did I ever mention the wire running up inside the building? |
Posted By: Tbone95
Date Posted: 03 May 2018 at 6:31am
Mentioned what? Hahaha, someone is sounding testy.......All I "asked" (more of a rhetorical on my part) was about connecting to the shed metal, which conceptually I was right anyway! In that post, you said "Your whole shed would be an antenna", which is why I asked why bother to run to the roof, which you then explained rust and such would prevent contact, which then the whole shed wouldn't be an antenna then would it? Think if you read some of my other posts on the topic, you'd see I had a grasp on AM / FM
 |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 03 May 2018 at 3:33pm
| I may have over explained my answer but going by your question which boiled down to does antenna height affect reception you do not have a grasp of the subject. I then decided we would begin your education at the basic level right down there around teaching a dog to speak or what to do with a stick of gum. Google is your friend you should use it more. |
Posted By: Tbone95
Date Posted: 04 May 2018 at 7:57am
BWAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Never wanted to pick a fight with ya', question was never intended to be confrontational, nor the way I replied with what I knew. But now that you seem to want to insult, get over yourself already mate! Hahahaha My question boiled down to whether your siding metal touched your roof metal (the roof is the higher part of a shop) or whether your shed was a rusted pile of crap. Like I said, the guys in our shop will clip over to a piece of conduit, which touches the column, which touches the siding, which touches the roof, and it works great. Wow
  |
Posted By: Walker
Date Posted: 04 May 2018 at 7:20pm
| Well hi there bone nice of you to say hello but I can assure you it is only an infatuation and you'll probably forget all about me in a few years. I really have no intention to relocate anyways. |
Posted By: HudCo
Date Posted: 06 May 2018 at 10:26am
| no matter how well the antanna is it not pick up paul harvey and the rest of the story at 12:00 noon |
Posted By: Ted J
Date Posted: 07 May 2018 at 11:21am
|
IF you can get WiFi out there, just use your laptop. ------------- "Allis-Express" 19?? WC / 1941 C / 1952 CA / 1956 WD45 / 1957 WD45 / 1958 D-17 |
Posted By: HudCo
Date Posted: 10 May 2018 at 9:35am
| dont think that laptop will get paul harvey either |
Posted By: chaskaduo
Date Posted: 10 May 2018 at 10:59am
|
How about Steve Harvey or Jerry Springer. ------------- 1938 B, 79 Dynamark 11/36 6spd, 95 Weed-Eater 16hp, 2010 Bolens 14hp |