Dipoles were the solution

I was having trouble with a couple of weak stations.  The first was WDOR-FM, 93.9 MHz, the station I listen to the Brewers on.  One night the signal got noisier and noisier - then I realized that the rabbit ears (from an old TV set) with a shorting wire to make them a loop was the problem.  So I removed the shorting wire and then shortened up each each of the rods to 30 inches (half of the roughly 5 foot long antenna from 468 / 93.9).  This was audibly better !

BTW, I stopped trying to catch the Brewers games on the originating station, WTMJ 620 in Milwaukee (180 miles away) which isn't as strong as WDOR-FM in Sturgeon Bay (50 miles away).

Next I was having trouble hearing my 11 meter thermometer beacon on CB channel 4 (27.05 MHz).  So I made up a quick indoor dipole by using the 468 / f formula again.  Made the dipole from some old twisted pair and the remaining skinny coax from MFJ.

it was a nicely made thingy but I was never going to use it with an HT in a car

  The beacon is now readable.

So a double win for the dipole formula from the Novice test !

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm