Ok, so I moved my station to a remote spot and my house is on the very edge of the signal. On the second floor of my house I have a stereo that has the 2 wire clips in the back for the wire fm antenna. Would there be a better antenna design I could make to pick up my frequency, or am just better off cutting the wire to the right length to match the frequency, and sticking both wires up vertical to match the polarity?
A simple antenna that tends to work best on FM stereos is the basic dipole. You can take something as simple as speaker wire and split the two peices of wire apart at the top so that each "leg" of the wire is the correct length (2.7 feet for 88.1MHz) and then run the rest of the wire that hasn't been separated like a twin lead coax to your stereo ant. input. Many stereo systems that are new use this very simple type of antenna. Make sure to mount it virtically. Most people make the mistake of mounting it horizontally using tacks on their wall when most FM stations put out a vertical polarized signal. The only better antenna than this is a beam type antenna, kind of like the old TV antennas. Some of those work well for FM.
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