Four Element Directional Outdoor FM Antenna

Nice little antenna at a really fair price. Great for cleaning up fm stations within 75 miles or so or for the beginning DX'er who wants to explore what's out there. High quality, polished aluminum. Seamless .388" (9.85mm) elements that don't whine in the wind or ice up inside. .715" square aluminum boom and a unique mast mount which will allow you to angle the antenna upwards (for whatever reason) or install flat as we normally do. You do not have to totally disassemble the mount to attach the antenna to a pole, or tower mount, or some strange side bracket...nice if you're a tower climber or stuck having to fasten it one handed. No need for a 300 to 75 ohm matching transformer on this thing...it's built into the driven element in a nice waterproof housing. Even the boom and the elements are waterproofed by end caps. This unit is pretty well thought out. It goes together real easy despite and instruction book that makes no sense. One note: Put the mast clamp on the boom near the balance point, NOT where the drawing shows it. If you are a DX'er or antenna experimenter you'll have fun with this setup. If you want to add on to it, don't buy a bunch of aluminum somewhere. Just buy a second antenna. It's cheaper and you'll get everything you need including the hardware you need to attach the elements to the boom. One word of warning...once you stretch the boom out to 90-100" you'll get some droop so slip some 5/8" metal tubing inside the boom for some strength. I bought 3 and I'm currently building a vertically stacked pair of 6 element units.

There are fewer and fewer dedicated outdoor directional FM antennas being manufactured for the United States. I have the mother of all FM antennas as my reference. An APS 13 with an average gain of over 9db and a Front-Back ratio of over 30 db. I had to rebuild it due to storms. However, placement is key. If there is no signal reaching the antenna then it does not matter how great the gain is on the antenna. I have learned to walk along the roof and locate where the strongest signal is for the desired station you are trying to receive. Have you ever been in your car in your driveway and notice your favorite FM distant station will disappear as the car is moving from one spot to another spot. The key is finding that spot where the signal reaches. Generally, height is your friend. With all this being said, I have found this antenna to do a very good job, overall and discovered it is picking up my favorite distant low powered alternative rock station better than my APS 13. I am sure the APS 13 would pick up the same station better if I relocated the APS to the same location as the Stellar labs but the Stellar does allow me to listen to multiple stations that are on the same frequency. Install a rotor. And good to go. For fun I build my own antennas and if you want to make this antenna have more gain you can add additional directors. I am ecstatic with this antenna! ❤️

Good directional antenna, works well in attic with a cement tile roof. The wing thumb screws that hold elements in place are poorly made, the plastic wings are loose and fall off the metal threads.

I used this for FM. The folded dipole is probably optimized at about 94 mhz or so. This is an improvement for me over the past folded dipole. This one has an extra director to make four elements. I have it mounted inside, so I cannot attest to the long duration outside. It is well made for the intended use, but don't jump on it. I received stations from about 50-60 miles away and I am in a bit of a bowl. Extra height would make a big difference also. Mine is mounted about 10 feet above the floor. In general, it's made sturdy enough, gets distance stations enough and should be a good antenna for those using this strictly for FM reception.

My tuner is a Sony ST J75, well known as very good sounding with very good FM specs for selectivity, channel seperation, distortion. However it is not the most sensitive in terms of reception, and it does have a sound quality issue with weaker signals. This antenna has pretty much fixed that issue for this tuner in my location - about 25 miles from my preferred relatively low power college FM station. However, the antenna is fairly flimsy. No way it will stand up to the winds we get here in the desert in Las Vegas. I will reinforce all the connecting fixtures with heavy application of tape but I will also plan to bring it inside on stormy days here. Presently it is sitting on a box on my 2nd floor porch. Also it arrived with a missing reinforcing piece for one of the attachment fixtures; probably lost out of the hole in the box it was shipped in. And since the antenna elements are fairly thin aluminum this could very well cause collapse of the tube over time. And in fact the central pre-attached circular element does have partial collapse of the tubing for the element where it is screwed to the stem of the antenna. Don't know what I can do about that. All in all, I think I would not buy again. I would spend more and get a more robust antenna - but cost would probably be triple this antenna. But this does signifcantly improve reception for me over the Crane dipole I was using. And if you were planning to use this indoors, wind and weather resistance of course would not be an issue in which case I would give it 5 stars.