Strange Aerial

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by Derek UK

Better quality transistor radios often had an aerial with a flexi joint at the base when pulled right out. This could be useful to swivel the mast to pick up the best signal. I've still got Grundig and Tandberg ones that do that. I think stereo broadcasts made the Beeb and others pay much more attention to polarisation due to the received signal having to be higher to get a good signal to noise ratio. Mono FM is more tolerant of signal level.

That's true enough, i was referring to the aerial being vertical taking less of a footprint so more practical.

Many of the better stereo FM recievers would auto-switch to mono reception in the case of poor signal quality - if memory serves they were designed to take the signal from both sides and mix them so that the mono reproduction mimicked what would be heard if the original transmission was mono. Some tracks such as Queens Bohemian Rhapsody would sound pretty strange without one channel completely!

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by Ron Kwas

Obviously, that is not an optimum location but in European countries, you are probably a lot closer to the transmitting stations than in this expansive country...the only less optimum location for an antenna I can think of would be underground...!

Wouldn't know about Europe! I do know that with the weaker transmission here and the various obstacles that AM reception has never been good, FM is better but find yourself on a fringe area of several transmitters and you tend to pick up nothing - zilch - nada.
Even FM here tends to be much more dependent on line-of-sight transmission than you describe.