I need advice on improving poor FM reception.

[Siddhartha]

A friend lives in essentially a basement, a house that is set into a hill. Sometimes the quality of the reception is better than other times but it is mostly poor. The local NPR station, less than 5 miles away, is one of her preferred music and news sources.

How can she improve her FM signal reception? Does anyone have a similar situation? What antennas and or signal boosters work?


Thanks in advance!

Siddhartha

 

[razel]

Used to have an affluent GF in high school who had terrible FM receiption and lived on a side of a hill facing the ocean so there she had no luck with FM transmission. Even her father and a HAM radio friend setup an antenna near the topmost portion of their backyard toward the top of the hill and was not worth the effort.

What's funny was my cheap Oldmobile's car radio got the stations all fine parked in their driveway. If they have an roof TV antenna you may want to get FM through that otherwise, NPR is available online. There really is no local NPR, just local stations that mix local content with National Public Radio.

 

[Siddhartha]

Used to have an affluent GF in high school who had terrible FM receiption and lived on a side of a hill facing the ocean so there she had no luck with FM transmission. Even her father and a HAM radio friend setup an antenna near the topmost portion of their backyard toward the top of the hill and was not worth the effort.

What's funny was my cheap Oldmobile's car radio got the stations all fine parked in their driveway. If they have an roof TV antenna you may want to get FM through that otherwise, NPR is available online. There really is no local NPR, just local stations that mix local content with National Public Radio.

She does not have cable or internet at home. Her receiver is plugged into the roof antenna but the reception is still poor.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Some TV antennas have an FM trap to specifically weed out those signals so check for that. It might also be tuned away from those frequencies if it's an attic antenna. High-mounted rabbit ears may work better. An amp may also help.

Also, height, location, and orientation can make all the difference.