The Best FM Antenna You Don’t Know About
The best value in a directional FM reception antenna available is an inexpensive antenna that is widely known among FM enthusiasts. The Radio Shack FM6 is no longer sold by Radio Shack but is still available from many antenna distributors as the Antennacraft FM6.
This antenna offers outstanding gain and side rejection while being a reasonable size. The FM 6 antenna engineering specifications from the Antennacraft site indicates it has 6.6 db gain, 66 degree bandwidth, 18.9 db front-to-back ratio, and is 71 inches long.
Mainly it is a performer; it picks up across the FM band and does a great job. Of course, with all FM antennas the key is height and good coax (you’ll hear this a lot from me). Brian Beezley provides an excellent analysis of the Antennacraft FM6 on his Web site.
Many FMers stack a pair of them with great results. Often there is little difference between the results with this antenna and antennas far greater in size and price. For ultimate enjoyment a rotor is necessary but not required; if your goal stations are generally in the same direction just point the antenna that way and secure it and it will do what you want.
The Antennacraft FM6 is usually available on eBay at an excellent price.
I live in a Rural,woody,hilly area and my favorite stations are about 75 miles away,one west and one north east.With this product fastened to a 20 ft section of pipe(no tower)they both can be brought in peggin a 4 on signal meter with a little hand tuning by turning the pipe as needed.Ive been here my entire life and havent found anything that even comes close to preforming as well as this antenna for the price ….please continue making this product.All my friends have one or two of them now. your friend, Dave Lane
June 24th, 2011 at 9:16 AM