In article , Dave Plowman
writes
In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
As a general comment, DAs for FM use are rarely satisfactory.


Have you any reasoning for that assertion Dave?..

Most good receivers approach the maximum theoretical sensitivity, so
adding untuned gain before them will do no good. Passive splitting works
just as well. You might get a VHF distribution system to work tolerably
well for clock radios on local reception, but that's about all.

Of course I could be wrong, but I've yet to actually witness for myself
one that does work as well as without.


Well I can tell you that they do, and they do it very well provided that
they aren't overloaded. I have a Labgear unit that has the FM input
supplied with a 5 element Triax aerial that is aimed midway between the
local TX at Madingley and Peterbourgh and its fine.

The main purpose of the amplifier section is to overcome the splitter or
divider losses. In fact its performance is very good indeed and this is
not too far removed from the performance of the amplifier systems we use
in the "day job", VHF comms radio, which have up to 16 outputs and cost
about 700 quid!....
--
Tony Sayer