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I live in a garden level (half below the ground) apartment and am wondering if any of you have any suggestions on how to improve my radio reception? I have a decent home theater set-up but the stupid reciever came with this silly little thin wire (gonna guess its probably around 28 guage) that is supposed to be the antenna and it just sucks. I can only get one station and not even that clear. There are quite a few stations that I can pick up in the truck outside the building 10 feet away so its not due to poor radio transmissions, just suck antenna and sucky location. I believe the antenna jack is of the coax type but will have to double check that tomorrow when the baby's not sleeping.

As always, thanks for the advice.

And I guess since I'm asking, do the new indoor digital rabbit ears for the TV's work well? I have this nice 46" HD flatscreen but we decided to cut costs so we don't have cable and the apartment doesn't have an outdoor antenna. I don't watch a lot of TV anymore but I do occasionally miss the news and would like to catch a football game once in a while.

The rabbit ears should work for your FM receiver. Both TV and and FM reception are in the same frequency band.

Although I don't live in a garden apt, I've used a 'folded dipole' antenna attached to my FM receiver for many years. It looks like the “T” Shaped Dipole Antenna - # 5031TV" about 1/3 of the way down the page in this link posted below. This one is probably the cheapest one you could get. After connecting to the the receiver, you can either tape it to the wall behind your stereo, or just drop in on the floor. These antennas are for a 300 ohm connection (two spade connections for screws).

FM - TV Antennas

If you have a coax or 'F' connection on the back of your receiver, you'll need an adapter or matching transformer (also called a 'ballun' converts 75 ohms to 300 ohms) to make this antenna work



These are pretty cheap and can be purchased in several places like Radio Shack, Home Depot or Lowes. Here's a link to one at Ace Hardware: http://www.acehardwareoutlet.com/produc ... GoogleBase

Also, call your local stations. I had the opposite problem: FM fine, one local TV channel not coming in (remember, on the VHF band, TV channels 2-6 are below the FM band and channels 7-13 are above the FM band). I called the engineer at the station I couldn't tune in and he mailed me out a small in-line filter to block the interference of the FM. Now I get all of my TV broadcast stations perfectly. He also told me exactly how long to make each "ear" of my rabbit ears antenna to get the best reception. So I would call the respective FM stations you want to listen to and ask their engineers how to get the best reception in your area. They are usually very happy to talk to you.