Although I know how to solder and do basic electrical troubleshooting, I’m far from an expert at electronics, and was hoping that someone here can explain--in layman's terms--the basics of how to build a makeshift MacGyver FM antenna (for pickup of FM--not transmitting it).
We have an FM tuner at work that’s used for playing music over our overhead speakers. Due to some recent changes, we can’t get our local radio station via Cable, so somebody attached a piece of wire to the back of the Tuner’s FM antenna connector. The other end of the wire had the conductors twsited onto each other to “close†the circuit (I don’t know if “close†is the correct terminology). Look at the attached photos.
The setup works okay, but it sometimes gets static. The back of the Tuner has a loop antenna, but if I’m not mistaken, those are for AM only. There are connections labelled AM, GND, and FM 300 Ohm. What does the “300 ohm†indicate? Does that imply that all FM antennas should have 300 ohms of resistance? Would that imply that I could untwist the copper at the free end of the wire, put a 300-ohm resistor in series to “close†the FM antenna circuit where you would connect to the back of the tuner. What I don’t get though, don’t things like car whip antennas have only one conductor, so a resistor wouldn’t work in that respect?
Sure, we could
buy an antenna
... but I’d like to know how antennas work.
