A free DAB aerial

In my earlier post I said how I had bought a new kitchen DAB radio but that reception wasn't great and I had to keep moving the aerial when I changed channels.

The FM radio that this replaced had a rod aerial and reception was slightly better, but the aerial still needed moving occasionally and there was no perfect spot.

The problem is that the kitchen is down at the back of the house, with slightly higher ground in the directions of the local transmitters, so reception is never going to be perfect. When we got the kitchen refurbished a few years ago I had a co-ax aerial socket put in with cable leading up into the loft - but never got around to fitting an aerial at the other end (not knowing if I wanted a radio or TV in the kitchen).

The dodgy reception on the new radio finally spurred me into wanting to fit a loft aerial, and a quick bit of research found a "free" aerial on the internet at: http://www.audiobritain.co.uk/DAB.html

In essence, the trick is to strip the right length of shielding off the end of the co-ax cable and put in a loop to form an inductance of about the right value:

It's a really neat Boffin Bodger trick. I stripped the last centimetre of insulation off the simple wire aerial that comes out of the back of the radio and poked this into a co-ax plug which is inserted into the aerial socket in the kitchen and the free aerial hangs vertically in the loft.

Both DAB and FM reception has improved! There's one small FM station I can no longer get (maybe it's horizontally polarised, or their low power transmitter is hidden from the new aerial position) but I can now get that station in better quality on DAB, so that's not a problem. And, other local stations which don't have slots on DAB can now be received on FM.

An excellent idea that works!