If you want quiet outdoor antenna for FM band, go to an folded dipole or full wave loop, with loop you can null noises from neighbours.

Build about 102cm long horisontal and 51cm tall vertical parts, feed from center of 51cm part.
No baluns or anything needed.

Measurements are from my head, might check them with calculator, but they are close.


Like this:

Use some PVC etc pipe to hold it up, bend it from 4mm aluminium tube or wire.

For mounting it to the PVC pipe, drill hole about 25.5cm from top, feed coax truh it and solder/crimp it to the wire/tube using you favorite method.

Pull that loop wire/tube near PVC tube and use some zipties/tape to secure it to the side of pipe.

If you want one vertical, just turn it so that 102cm part is up, feed from middle of 51cm part.

I have another amplified, portable aerial that I sometimes use, is based on an old Elektor design called the "Omega Aerial". It's performance is really good, but it's not as convenient as it's a loop design. It's sometimes useful to null out directional interference, however, as it's very directional.

Albert H wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 8:34 pm

EFR wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 7:05 am

Albert H wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 11:25 pm Whip-Aerial.png

Thats a quite classic one!

It is. The only (minor) problem with it is that the FET can be killed by static. It also runs warm because of the low value emitter resistor for the 2219. We had some snow about 2 weeks ago, and the aerial was covered with snow and ice in the morning, but the little tubular can that contains the amplifier was clear of snow!

Old modifield was like Vishay +100Mohm thickfilm resistor from fet gate to ground, and that 1Mohm resistor was something "little bit lower value", dont remember what.

shuffy wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 11:32 pm
I can confirm that both the PL-310ET and DX-286 have internal ferrite bar aerials which work fine. Haven't tried LW on the DX-286 yet, it's disabled by default but easy to switch back on. I don't know about the TEF radios like the one in the picture on FMEnjoyer's post above, but the "desktop" TEF I bought which started off my interest in this chip has an internal antenna which is switchable on the back. Performance is nothing to write home about in fact you won't even be buying a stamp - I think the unit itself generates too much internal noise to bother.

I did wonder what the tef was like on mw, its what I use here for fm, sounds like its not so good on mw, it dosen’t have a ferrite bar antenna so i’ve not been able to use it here. The other thing is weather a radio can tune to the dutch pirates above 1602khz, weather it would be easy if something is not set up by default. I use the fm aerial for listening through sw with the tef, it dose pick up well, there is quite alot of noise.
I think car radios do often suffer from internally generated noise too, would make listening to a weak or low power signal impossible now, along with the in car transmitters, I suppose another subject. I did use a car radio powered by a 12v supply before they started putting the chip inside standalone radios they do work very well, the jvc kd-x262 is a good one, a stylish number

EFR wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 8:35 pm If you want quiet outdoor antenna for FM band, go to an folded dipole or full wave loop, with loop you can null noises from neighbours.

Build about 102cm long horisontal and 51cm tall vertical parts, feed from center of 51cm part.
No baluns or anything needed.

Measurements are from my head, might check them with calculator, but they are close.


Like this:

Code: Select all

120CM
____________________
|                   | Feed here from middle.


|                   | 51cm tall part.
____________________

Use some PVC etc pipe to hold it up, bend it from 4mm aluminium tube or wire.

For mounting it to the PVC pipe, drill hole about 25.5cm from top, feed coax truh it and solder/crimp it to the wire/tube using you favorite method.

Pull that loop wire/tube near PVC tube and use some zipties/tape to secure it to the side of pipe.

If you want one vertical, just turn it so that 102cm part is up, feed from middle of 51cm part.

Thanks for the suggestion. I recall the noise will dropping off once outside must be some wacky Chinese PSU letting off the nasties over the band.

FMEnjoyer wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 12:59 pm Does anyone know if the TECSUN external antenna sockets really work ?
Is this essentially a mono mini jack + and - and would 50 Ohm coax run be ok ?

Yes and yes it does work, on my PL-310ET at least. Make sure the earth side is connected to your feeder, it makes a big difference.

I added wire to the PL-310 and DX-286 antennas to make both 80cm long and did my basic comparison again. Both radios performed a little better but I still think the PL-310 pulled the stations in a tiny bit better - not much in it to be honest. There's still a 2-3dBu difference in the meter readings. Same story on shortwave with the meter but I'd say the DX-286 won here as it dealt with the fading better than the TECSUN.

radionortheast wrote: ↑Wed Jan 21, 2026 9:25 am I did wonder what the tef was like on mw, its what I use here for fm, sounds like its not so good on mw, it dosen’t have a ferrite bar antenna so i’ve not been able to use it here. The other thing is weather a radio can tune to the dutch pirates above 1602khz, weather it would be easy if something is not set up by default. I use the fm aerial for listening through sw with the tef, it dose pick up well, there is quite alot of noise.

I disagree, the TEF chip is good on MW/SW. Follow the link to Barney's TEF that I posted earlier on this thread and have a play with it. From my experience with the desktop TEF, I assume that the ESP32 SoC they're using is noisy enough to make an internal ferrite bar pretty pointless for AM. You probably always want an external antenna as far away as possible from the radio. Also different TEF modules / radio designs connect the antenna to the chip differently so that's something to be careful of if you can.

MW on my DX-286 (probably configurable) goes up to 1710kHz so with a decent antenna you should get those pirates up the top end of the band. Actually I think you can get the full range of the TEF chip on HF (up to 27Mhz?) but from 1711kHz the frequency will be mapped to one of the shortwave meter bands. Hope that helps.