Outdoor FM antenna lifespan?

[cristphoto]

I haven't listened to my tuner in a couple years. Now being semi-confined to home due to this virus epidemic I'm listening to FM much more. I'm only getting two stations in marginal stereo on my tuner. The rest are only in mono with slight hiss. My rooftop omni and co-ax are over 25 years old. Is this past typical life expectancy? I plan on replacing setup with attic mount omni and new co-ax. Getting too old to get on the roof anymore. I tried the supplied T dipole that came with the tuner but that didn't do anything since my setup is in the basement. Any helpful comments? Thanks.

[Paul-H]

You will probably find it's the coax failed rather than the actual rooftop omni, unless it's got serious alli rot.

I just use one of the high gain stubby ones sat on my windowsill and get a few in stereo with RDS info. I only listen to a few stations and it gets the ones I want no trouble. I live in a listed building and can't have roof mounted aerials.

[Barry]

My rooftop 3-element Yagi is over 40 years old. It is corroded, and one half of one of the director elements is missing, yet I can still pick up at least a dozen radio stations, in stereo, with a good signal strength.

My suspicion is that perhaps rain water has got into the coaxial down feed. Most RF cable used for FM radio uses 'semi-airspaced' construction, where the dielectric support looks in cross-section like a cartwheel, with airspaced channels between the 'spokes'. The hollow channels can not only draw in water but cause it to move with time down the length of the cable. Many years ago I had need to extend the TV cable in my parents house as they wanted to move the TV into a different room. When I removed the Belling and Lee connector, to my surprise some water dripped out from the end of the cable!

The only way to find out for sure would be to ask an aerial rigger to measure the signal strength at the tuner end.

[Pharos]

My experience, although different because I live on the coast, is that the core connection actually has corroded away completely on a few occasions, the cover not water sealed to the casing, which may apply to you also.

I am also interested in a loft mount aerial because I have only two of the eight signal strength lights glowing, I'm using only a one wavelength dipole horizontally polarised, and the transmission are, or were at lease, slant polarised.

Any recommendations will also be helpful to me, and gratefully received..

[guy]

Like the above answers, I think it much more likely that the coaxial or connections have degraded rather than the arial. Most likely the external "junction box", but start by checking the plug to cable connection at the tuner end. If that doesn't improve maters then try a local tradesman - are you UK or USA? that may help members come up with a suitable person for the job.

[Barry]

Plasticine or 'Play Doh' can be used to pack the connector casing of the aerial.

[cristphoto]

Thanks to all for the quick responses. Great forum - I just joined today. I just ordered a new antenna and co-ax cable from Amazon. Relatively cheap repair (assuming its not my tuner). I was also wondering if my antenna was hit by lightning. I'm in the Washington DC area and we can get summer thunderstorms from time to time and I don't recall grounding the system. From the responses it seems like antennas outlast the cabling. I don't recall taping or doing anything special to weatherproof the outdoor connections so corrosion and bad cable is a good suspect. Again thanks for the help.

[dave2010]

Not sure about FM in your area, nor your exact domestic situation. FM can be very good - though it depends on the broadcast quality as well. I lived in California for a while, and we picked up stations quite easily, even on portable sets. In the US, as in the UK, sound quality varied depending on the station, and that also depended on the type of programme material. In the UK arguably the best sound quality is from BBC Radio 3, but that has varied over the years. Some don't like it because the modulation depth may be less than other stations, in order to give wider dynamic range. This gives more hiss on listening, so a good aerial may be a strong requirement in order to get the hiss level down. Some people think the quality is lower, because of this, and other factors. The situation is complicated further by processing at the broadcast end. There is probably nearly always going to be some dynamic compression at the broadcast end, but for high quality music dynamic compression tends to kill the sound. Many people may not care too much about that. Yet another factor is the ratio of speech to music - some people prefer the music to be louder than speech, and others prefer things the other way round. That is always going to be a problem with broadcast programmes, even via DAB or internet.

In the UK in one house I had a loft aerial installed, to pull in a transmitter which I think was about 50 miles away. That gave overall quite good results, with a slight residual hiss. I thought that was inevitable with FM, but years later someone sent me a recording made from FM which had hardly any hiss at all. It is possible - though does depend on the tuner. I think my FM tuner is good enough, so an even better aerial (on the roof for example) might have reduced the hiss to a practical level of inaudiblity. There are trade offs with using a single loft or roof mounted aerial. Getting the high gain on wanted stations is likely to need a directional aerial - possibly one which is highly directional. If the stations in your area are at different angles from your location, then you will probably need to orientate the aerial to give the best result on your favourite station.

In the US you don't have DAB - I'm not sure exactly what form of transmission you have in Maryland for "higher" quality broadcasts. In the UK we have DAB - but many people who want really high quality sound just use the internet nowadays. DAB was supposed to give better quality sound, but many broadcasters reduced the bit rate, so some people now consider that DAB is arguably not even as good as FM.

The previous time we moved house - from the one with the loft aerial - I meant to have new aerials fitted, but in the end the cost of having good aerials fitted seemed too high, and we were still paying off our mortgage, so we never bothered. Perhaps that is also a consideration in the US.

If the stations you want to pick up are within a 20-30 mile range, you can probably do your own wiring with a loft aerial - if you have access to a loft in your property - though if your building is shared you may not be able to do that.

Other factors which may apply to some people are if there is a very close transmitter, in which case rather than increasing the gain, attenuators may have to be used. One of my FM tuners has those built in. If you live in a city, you may also find that local operators may interfere - for example taxi drivers using radio to communicate with their base - so a more directional aerial may help to reduce problems of that kind.

Overall I thnk that interest in FM has dropped a lot in the UK, though it is still used a lot for mobile use in cars. It is only in the last few years that digital radio has started to become a regular feature in cars, even though there has been digital radio in the UK since before 2000. I did not get a DAB set until around 2002-3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio_in_the_United_Kingdom

[guy]

Plasticine or 'Play Doh' can be used to pack the connector casing of the aerial.

Brilliant idea :cool:

[cristphoto]

Very detailed comment Dave - thanks. My antenna and cable will arrive Friday. Hopefully that will fix everything. I'm not a huge listener to FM but I do like everything in my system to work properly. The antenna I ordered has a rating of 30 miles and since I'm in the US midway between Washington DC and Baltimore (about 30 miles apart) it should work fine. Its an omnidirectional like my current antenna so after an initial setup I should be able to receive stations from both cities as in the past.

If it turns out its my tuner and not the antenna system I will probably get one of those Bluetooth adapters to receive all the internet stations. I have this feature on a Bose radio I use upstairs and I enjoy the wide selection of stations available. Does anyone have any experience with these devices? Any special thing to look for or are they all fairly similar? Again, thanks for all the helpful comments.

[cristphoto]

Update: My antenna arrived today so I quickly hooked it up and sat it on the floor in my living room (about 4 feet square making the wife annoyed). Problem solved - stereo FM again. Tomorrow I'll mount it in the attic and being about 10 feet higher should provide a bit stronger signal.