A m radio signal.

[Al Manzoli]

How to build an antenna to bring in an A M radio station and eliminate all static etc ?

There has to be a simple way !

I enjoy listening to talk radio C F R A 580 , but there is so much static , that it gets annoying !

Granted ... I live an in an area that does not have good reception for radio signals ( a valley).

My mobile phone only works in some areas .

Any advice ?

 

[MikeMl]

What happens if you tune it on your car radio and you drive a few hundred feet from your house.? Most likely, you have some piece of imported consumer electronics junk that has a switching power supply in it.

If you notice that the interference increases as you drive back to your house, go turn off the main electrical panel to see if the noise disappears. If it does, turn on the panel, but kill each of the branch breakers one at a time to see if you can find one that kills the noise. If so, then you will have to find the individual item powered on that branch. Could be your LED/LCD tv set, furnace, LED or CFL lighting.

If you find that the interference is coming from your neighbors house, you can do what I did. Sell my suburban house and move to the country, where my nearest neighbor is 1/4mi. away... I am a ham, so my problem was not AM broadcast, but all frequencies between 3.5MHz and 30MHz.

btw- this has no correlation with your cell phone problems.

 

[crutschow]

Here's a company that builds a device that is stated to boost AM reception. I'm sure there are others that do the same.

 

[MikeMl]

Here's a company that builds a device that is stated to boost AM reception. I'm sure there are others that do the same.

...and if the problem is local interference, it may or may not do anything for you. The only way it might is if it is mounted outside far enough away from the source of the interference...

Use the car radio (or a battery-powered AM radio) to go looking for a source of interference before buying an amplified antenna. A remote loop antenna offers the ability to orient it so as to null the interference (if it is a single source).

An AM radio with a built-in ferrite loopstick antenna can sometimes be positioned so as to null out noise while still receiving your desired station.

 

[JimB]

eliminate all static

RANT_MODE:ON
That expression "static" really gets on my nerves.
It is usd by people who are not knowledgable about these things to describe any interference to radio reception.
Real "static" is caused by static electricity in the air (the stuff which makes lightning), not by the myriad of other things which create electro-magnetic crap!
RANT_MODE:OFF

HELPFULL_MODE:ON
MikeMLs suggestion of turning off all the other electrical stuff in the house to try and identify the cause of interference is a good one.
As is the suggestion of seeing how the station is received by a car radio, and if the source of interference is local to your house or coming from somewhere else.

Let us assume that your problem is not high levels of interference, but weak signal from your desired station.
I assume that you are trying to listen with a typical portable radio.
Here is a trick which has worked for me when I wanted to listen to UK radio stations when I was on holiday in Iceland.
Get a long length of wire (try 5 metres for a start).
Lay it out on the ground.
Wind one end of the wire around the radio, four of five times.
Connect the stub end which you have just wound around the radio to some point which is earthed.
You will now have a big increase in received signal strength. Moving the long trailing end of the wire around may improve the signal.

Why does this work?
You are effectively link coupling an external antenna to the ferrite rod antenna (loopstick, in USA ?) which is built into the radio.

JimB

 

[audioguru]

When you say the radio station is received with static, maybe you mean it is received with crackling interference.
But that is how an AM radio works! AM means Amplitude Modulation. Crackling from lightning, electric motors and electric switches creates Amplitude Modulation that is received mixed together with the AM radio station.

A half-decent FM radio does not pickup AM interference (crackling).

 

[Brevor]

Using an outdoor antenna often helps.