Wireless Sirius Antenna

We made a straightforward FM antenna for my Sirius Satellite radio car system's FM transmitter, and from now on the sound quality is excellent.

We donate to Sirius Satellite broadcast and love the idea, but for quite a long time I experienced trouble getting high quality reception. My vehicle only has a tape player/AM/FM radio, and it's challenging for use of the rear panel (the reason why vehicle stereos cannot come standard with additional stereo RCA jacks regarding the front panel is beyond me personally). I bought one of the vehicle kits for Sirius that uses an FM transmitter, which is a well known, wireless option to use your car or truck stereo to hear transportable electronic devices such as CD players or iPods. This sort of system works by taking the sound signal and modulating it onto an FM provider at 88.1, 88.3, 88.5, or 88.7 MHz (switch selectable). After this you tune your car's FM radio to that particular same regularity, and, voila, you notice the songs.

Not so fast, however. The FM sign released by my receiver wasn't strong adequate, so I got most static with it, so much so that I gave up on this solution briefly. When I considered a cassette tape adapter. You've probably seen these-a stereo microphone connect, which goes in your iPod or Satellite broadcast receiver, connects to a cassette tape which goes in your vehicle stereo. Never buy one of those. I do not start thinking about myself to-be an audiophile, although quality of sound ended up being bad. The large frequencies get terribly attenuated, and 's and th's become sounding very staticky to the level of being intolerable. And so I was back at floor zero unless i desired to crack available my dash board and get accessibility the rear panel of my vehicle stereo, which I don't.

Then (yes, I'm not sure why it took me such a long time) we realized that my satellite receiver had a jack called "FM antenna." This jack enables you to link the receiver straight to your vehicle stereo's FM antenna input, but, when I've currently stated, i really could perhaps not effortlessly access the FM antenna feedback for my car stereo. We reasoned when I linked a dipole antenna into the jack, though, possibly that could provide enough signal fidelity to really make the FM transmitter work without having the fixed. Thus I fashioned a simple half-wavelength dipole antenna as pictured below:

A simple FM dipole antenna for an FM transmitter (or receiver) system. It plugs into the FM antenna jack on your own transmitter. The wavelength, l, is calculated by dividing the speed of light by the regularity, e.g. 1.18 x 1010 in/s split by 88.5 x 106 Hz.
I possibly could are making the dipole antenna from individual parts, but i got myself a $5 AC/DC adapter from Radio Shack which had the best form of plug and a cord where I really could quickly pull apart the 2 conductors. After cutting the conductors to the right size, I plugged my antenna in to the FM antenna jack to my Sirius receiver, and wow, just what a significant difference. The quality of sound is excellent (I'm most likely violating some FCC broadcasting limits, but I think we'll take my opportunities). If you've been struggling with the audio quality from an FM transmitter system for your car stereo, and contains an FM antenna jack like mine, I suggest this process.

Notes: the size of the antenna is not important. I've listed the optimum length for 88.5 MHz, but your vehicle's external FM antenna uses one size to pay for the entire FM musical organization while there is perhaps not a big penalty for being down slightly into the length. Likewise, the antenna cables do not have to be held perfectly straight. We tucked mine into the seam along the top of my dashboard such that it's mostly out-of picture.