Magnum Dynalab - SR100 Indoor FM Antenna

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Price: $40.00    

Product Feature

• Base measures 3.5" W x 2.5" D x 3/4" H
• Maximum height of antenna fully extended: approx. 37.5"
• Maximum width of antenna fully spread: approx. 32"
• Cord is approx. 3' long
• Receives local HDTV signal with ease due to its UHF design

Product Description

Indoor reception presents its own unique 'multipath' problems due to metal used in building construction. But metal isn't the only problem. Furniture and even people in the room can adversely affect reception. The Magnum Dynalab SR-100 Silver Ribbon antenna helps avoid that problem. Its innovative design allows you to 'focus' the antenna on either the main signal or on a strong reflected signal to diminish multipath effects. The functional, bright-metal elements may be adjusted by simply pulling upward on the center adjustment knob. This provides a precisely-tuned element at the proper impedance for each receivable FM station on the band, thereby maximizing reception. And the base rotates for easy aiming. The Silver Ribbon is tunable across the entire FM band. "The SR-100 FM antenna is more than affordable and was an essential accessory," reports Canada Hi-Fi magazine online.

Magnum Dynalab - SR100 Indoor FM Antenna Review

I recently got one of these antennas to try to solve some of the intermittent reception issues I had with the standard dipole supplied with my various receivers and radios. I generally have very good signal strength but lots of multipath problems. The antenna arrived and it was a pretty interesting design with lenticular elements (curved like a tape measure) that permits you to pull the center element up or down and shorten the side elements. Pretty slick, and presumably intended to tune the antenna to the frequency. At least that's what I guessed, since there *are no instructions* or even a suggestion of what you are supposed to do with it. The only written information supplied is a slip warning about the sharp edges of the elements and to not cut yourself on them. They aren't all that sharp but if you slid your had down it I suppose you could get cut.

The antenna attaches to the very crude base but this came apart several times in testing. The output of the antenna is a twin-lead presumably 300-ohm wire. The antenna comes with a 300-75 ohm type balun with an "F" connector that is required for any tuner made in the last 30 years or so.

For testing I attached the antenna to my Dyna FM-3 tuner since it has an analog signal strength indication and has a marginal sensitivity to begin with. After playing with the length adjuster it was clear that the best adjustment was to have the center element pushed all the way down resulting in something that looked a lot like conventional TV rabbit ears. The antenna is clearly quite directional as stated and may well be able to eliminate multipath issues with careful adjustment.

However, regardless of orientation the signal strength indication was pretty low, and the output of the tuner was very noisy, even in mono mode. The cheapie dipole antenna that came with my Sony tuner sends the signal strength almost to the peak and is pretty close to working with only a vague hiss on mono. I tried another tuner (Sony XDR-f1 HD Radio, with what is probably the best RF section ever put in a component tuner) and while the sound was mostly acceptable on analog FM, the HD indicator showed that it was unable to sync up with the digital stream and only showed 2 bars with an occasional blip of the 3rd, and couldn't decode the RDS signal either (the station id indicator). By comparison, the stock dipole pegs the signal strength and reliably syncs up on HD although it occasionally drops back to analog. So still not as good as a 79 cent dipole. I tried it again on my Telefunken opus 7 radio. This radio has an excellent RF section and is mostly unaffected by multipath since it's mono only. The dipole maxes out the "magic eye" tube signal strength indicator, completely closing it. The Magnum antenna, no matter how I tuned it, or how I turned it, at most put it about halfway between min and max.

Note that in all the tests I tried the main "problem station" at 91 MHz. and another station at 107.7 Mhz. It was closer to the dipole at the high frequency end of the spectrum but still generally much worse as far as the performance goes.

As a final comparison I found some old rabbit ears that came with an ancient Sony TV and tried those. After a lot of fiddling, I got them to work about half way between the Magnum antenna and the dipole - better than the Magnum. It's my guess that since it is intended for both TV and FM that the Magnum is probably too short for ideal FM performance, so I tried shortening the rabbit ears to match the Magnum, adjusted them to the same angle, and held the orientation the same as the Magnum - and they were very close in performance, with a slight edge to the rabbit ears. That pretty well convinced me that the antenna was not going to work very well and that it is too short for FM radio frequencies.

I didn't attempt to test the TV reception since I have a perfectly adequate TV system that I did not want to disturb.

From all this testing I conclude that the Magnum Silver ribbon is less effective and gives less satisfactory performance in any application I have found than the stock dipole antenna that comes with most tuners (the type that you can buy at Radio Shack for 79 cents or so) and is a marginally worse performer than improperly adjusted TV rabbit ears, at least when used for FM radio. Not at all worth the ~$40 cost. It also comes with no instructions, and the base tends to fall off with only minor manipulation. Not recommended for FM.

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