Boosting radio signal in residence?

Basq

My father wants to listen to a radio station (Midwest Radio) whose reception is non-existant in the house, but fine in his car.

I blame the poor kitchen radio he's using to listen to it, and maybe a radio booster aerial (there is something like this, right? I'm not imagining it! :eek:) and a better quality radio would fix the issue.

Anyone have any suggestions, or tips on getting this to work? He wanted me to buy a WiFi radio (with the Receiva service, who broadcast Midwest Radio) but I refuse to pay "top-dolla" for a piece of kit that:

a) will only be used to listen to a radio station that broadcasts about 40 miles away!
b) will, unless you pay €100 - €150 for, will sound reminiscent of buzzing eminating from a tin.

PS - this query could be suited to a number of forums I reckon so mods, feel free to move it to a more appropriate one if necessary!

mike65

Well a booster amp needs something to boost, can any signal for Midwest Radio be discerned? Does the radio have a proper extendable ariel or an internal element?

http://direct.asda.com/One-for-All-SV9151-Amplified-Indoor-Aerial/000572003,default,pd.html

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=33217&C=AffilWin72588&T=41513_

Basq

Cheers mike.

mike65 wrote: »

Well a booster amp needs something to boost, can any signal for Midwest Radio be discerned?

Don't know.. will find out when I'm up there this evening. He tells me he can hear nothing.. but there's bound to be something there.

mike65 wrote: »

Does the radio have a proper extendable ariel or an internal element?

It has an internal aerial.. it's a horrific small kitchen radio. Said I'd probably buy him a new radio with digital tuning.. as that "twiddly knob" doesn't help.

mike65

Get rid of the radio by the sound of it.

Just to ramble a moment - modern radios are pretty crap. The whole concept of a fair quality "fridgetop" radio receiver seems to be something from a bygone era sadly - Roberts and Sony are the last "names" who make a decent range of them.

Big Tone

mike65 wrote: »

Get rid of the radio by the sound of it.

Just to ramble a moment - modern radios are pretty crap. The whole concept of a fair quality "fridgetop" radio receiver seems to be something from a bygone era sadly - Roberts and Sony are the last "names" who make a decent range of them.

Spot on, except I find Sony radios have become very poor in the last 10 years or so, Sangean not much better though Philips and Roberts are good alright.

There's no doubt about it but modern portable radios are crap!

They use broad band circuits, which are dirt cheap and mass produced, are being fitted into radios (ie J-Wins, Lloydtron, Goodmans etc), unfortunately the end result being that these circuits become easily overloaded by TXs located nearby.

Selectivity is cut way down so you cannot DX on these radios, they're only designed to pick up the strongest signals on FM but this can lead to "mixing and imaging" effects up and down the FM band.

L1011

mike65 wrote: »

Get rid of the radio by the sound of it.

Just to ramble a moment - modern radios are pretty crap. The whole concept of a fair quality "fridgetop" radio receiver seems to be something from a bygone era sadly - Roberts and Sony are the last "names" who make a decent range of them.

Pure also do very decent kitchen units, but as most are DAB they won't be much use in this situation. My Evoke 2XT has very good FM reception, however.

Big Tone

MYOB wrote: »

Pure also do very decent kitchen units, but as most are DAB they won't be much use in this situation. My Evoke 2XT has very good FM reception, however.

Yea thats true I've had a good experience of the Pure One the DAB/FM radio with very good screening and sensitivity/selectivity for DXing and nulling out the effect from strong TXs with the added bonus of which mode you want to tune in ie DX/Local.

Liam Byrne

Big Tone wrote: »

Spot on, except I find Sony radios have become very poor in the last 10 years or so

+1

I bought a clock radio and got a rake of overload, sprogs and harmonics (internal to the unit) so brought it back and changed it (paying a nice bit extra) for a Sony, on the assumption that there would be a big difference.

There isn't.

Big Tone

Liam Byrne wrote: »

+1

I bought a clock radio and got a rake of overload, sprogs and harmonics (internal to the unit) so brought it back and changed it (paying a nice bit extra) for a Sony, on the assumption that there would be a big difference.

There isn't.

Unfort they're all being fitted with the same components of the broad band circuit.

I know someone who decided to get rid of an old clock radio and buy a new Sony one, they live near an RTE radio installation and its was almost impossible to tune the new radio to a clear RTE channel due to internal overloading driving the RF circuit in non-linearity therefore having a "blanketing " effect across the FM band (generating harmonics) and this lead to desensitising of the radio to receive other stations from across town and beyond.

The old radio had far better attenuation for screening out those mixes.

Just goes to prove that New doesn't necessarily mean Better.

FergalBoards.ie

Big Tone wrote: »

Sangean not much better though Philips and Roberts are good alright.

QUOTE]

Only just came across this thread, sorry.

I agree with the general thrust of this thread, but should point out that all Roberts radios are merely Sangean re-badged and overpriced!

All digital read-out radios have INFERIOR reception to analog tuned ones for reasons of interference caused by the readout/PLL circuit, unless the designed built-in a lot of countermeasures, only available on expensive radios.

40 mile reception is quite feasible, but to accomplish this, you will need to make sure that all interference received by the antenna is weaker than the radio signal itself.

That would probably mean a roof mounted antenna.

Also VHF signals are subject to various meteological effects. So sometimes it won't work.

I'd say bite the bullet and go wifi.

L1011

Very high end Roberts units aren't rebranded. Consumer grade ones (Plastic cases) are... at least thats what their website claims, but it also claims its a "family run UK company" as opposed to the reality, which is that its owned by a large Irish electrical heating manufacturer...

FergalBoards.ie

Interesting MYOB.

My attitude to Roberts, I'd have to say is that they're an example of what you might call "British Isles Tax", not only do we have a rip-off Ireland scenario, but comparing Irish prices to British ones doesn't work either.

What seems to happen is that once global products hit Britain they magically zoom up in price, once they are "imported" into Ireland they go up again!

In the old days this was explained as the costs of "import". These days global trading is easy and there are no import issues whatsoever between UK/IE.

However, I'm at a loss to find a "genuine" Roberts radio. Maybe it would change my mind a bit about the firm.

I also can't see the reference to the Sangean/Roberts issue on the website. Would you be kind enough to post a link?

If there were such a thing as a Roberts Radio that was different from the ground up to a Sangean (not something like having DAB band coverage/EPG tweaks or similar) I'd be genuinely interested in seeing what it's like. I'm "into" radios.

recycler1

basquille wrote: »

My father wants to listen to a radio station (Midwest Radio) whose reception is non-existant in the house, but fine in his car.

I blame the poor kitchen radio he's using to listen to it, and maybe a radio booster aerial (there is something like this, right? I'm not imagining it! :eek:) and a better quality radio would fix the issue.

Anyone have any suggestions, or tips on getting this to work? He wanted me to buy a WiFi radio (with the Receiva service, who broadcast Midwest Radio) but I refuse to pay "top-dolla" for a piece of kit that:

a) will only be used to listen to a radio station that broadcasts about 40 miles away!
b) will, unless you pay €100 - €150 for, will sound reminiscent of buzzing eminating from a tin.

PS - this query could be suited to a number of forums I reckon so mods, feel free to move it to a more appropriate one if necessary!

I have another suggestion for you - install a car radio in your fathers kitchen.
This is not as daft as you might think.
Car radios are designed to operate in electrically hostile environments and even a relative cheap one should give substantially better reception than your standard kitchen radio.

In addition to the radio, you'll need a 12volt power supply from the likes of Maplin. In theory you'd need a matched aerial - aka a "car aerial". In practice, a length of cable plugged into the back of the radio should be fine. You could mount it under a kitchen cabinet, just like a built in kitchen radio.

I did this, once upon a time, and it was a big success. I used a car radio with a removable sleeve. The only tricky bit was installing the sleeve under a cabinet. (I left that one to the kitchen installer. ) I've moved long since, but I suspect it's still going strong.