Fm Dxing

westportman

hi all
is anyone here into FM DXING?, and if so what is the chepest way to get into it, ie what kind of radio and aerial do you need? can anyone help at all?

Ulsterman 1690

An FM tuner (or even a car radio) fed from an outside aerial (dipole or yagi with rotator)

DMC

One of these, Ulsterman 1690....:)

byte

Oh, avoid those halo's. They are rubbish with poor gain.

Have a look at this site, see if it helps..
http://www.amfmdx.net/

Ulsterman 1690

Id have to agree with byte. While halo's are better than nothing a bog standard dipole works far better (and is usually cheaper)

westportman

hi guys
i think i will go for the dipole. Is it east to come a cross them? or maybe be easyer to get it online maybe.

westportman

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

An FM tuner (or even a car radio) fed from an outside aerial (dipole or yagi with rotator)

And by the way will any stero with fm do? i was thinking of getting a new radio anyone know of any good sesetive fm radios at all??

Bogger77

I've found car radios to have really sensitive recievers, hook them up to a 12v transformer. Cheap too

westportman

Which dipole would be the best to go for for FM, and where can you buy them in mayo?

Ulsterman 1690

You can get dipoles in Maplin or some branches of B&Q

Dipole
multielement yagi

Rippy

You might find a masthead amp useful. If your Tv aerial is uhf only (no VHF)
get something like a Triax TA32W/ 24W , mount your dipole on your mast, and feed it into the VHF input on the amp. The TV aerial obviously goes into the UHF side, hopefully improving your TV reception. Power supply needed at the other end of your coax of course. Fit cheap fm/uhf diplexer to output of power supply , connect to car radio/ tuner and there you go!

lawhec

A good car radio not only has more sensitive circuits than house based radios, but is also more selective i.e. it can filter out nearby stations better. In a car itself if the aerial is roof mounted it'll also work well with the aerial relatively free of obstructions and the whole car acting as a ground plane.

For Home DXing, a simple FM monopole vertically mounted is OK to start off with, for the serious DXer a more directional aerial with at least 3 to 6 elements on a rotar then comes into play. Unfortunately I don't have this luxury.

westportman

hi there
What would the best home based FM radio to get can anyone tell me??

Ulsterman 1690

By Home based do you mean a hifi tuner ?

The Denon TU260L is supposed to have very good sound quality but if youre specifically into DXing Pioneer (epecially the ones with switchable IF bandwidths) or Sony might be better

If youre going for Sony though be careful some of their models are very senesitive others are hopless (it seems to be a case of one extreme or the other with them)

Most newer Car radios have pretty good reception so there is a lot to be said for fixing up a car radio with an outside aerial (despite the 75 to 150 ohm mismatch) and a 12 volt power unit

Mike 1972

You might find a masthead amp useful

If there are one or more very strong FM signals in your area then boosters (especially the cheaper variety) can cause more problems than they solve

Ulsterman 1690

I came across a few sites dealing with DXing I thought you might be interested in
Some of them cover TV or Ham 50MHz DXing rather than purely FM but the propagation/ranges are pretty similar


http://www.skywaves.info/fmta.html
http://www.vhfdx.net/esmaps/esmap310505.html
http://www.geocities.com/tvdxrools/
http://www.uksmg.org/sporade.htm
http://www.geocities.com/toddemslie/index.html
http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=222423&page=1&pp=25