On Fri, 27 Jul 2012 08:59:57 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Fri, 27 Jul 2012 10:12:54 -0400, micky
wrote:

On Ebay, I bought a cell phone with FM radio, that gets the radio from
local stations, not from cell phone data, and after I bought it, I
found the manual online, which says that the radio antenna is the wire
to the earphones.

Yep. I have one like that. Motorola Droid X. The receiver
sensitivity is horrible and it only works in strong signal areas.

My friend had a Sony Ericson (model I forget, maybe w300i, several
years old) that worked well on 88.1, but the phone broke in other
ways, and her new phone is a Samsung something smart phone, and the
sound goes in and out, sometimes good, sometimes not. . She gets
consistently good reception on some commercial FM stations but 88.1
WYPR is public and she thinks the transmitter is weaker.

The station does come in well on my Sandisk Clip, a little MP3 player
about 1.5" almost square, but I've mislaid that.

But the phone didn't come with the factory earphones.

Mostly I want to listen to 88.1 Mhz FM, and if possile 88.5, and
90.1frequencies.

For antenna purposes and those frequencies, are there any differences
from one headset to another?

Somewhat. There are headsets (4 wires) and earphones (3 wires).
Either will work. The problem is that some of the headsets come with
shielded wires, which will cause reception problems. I've only seen
one like this, and it has an easily identified thick cable.

Good. I'll avoid that.

Does the thickness of the copper wire matter?

No. In theory, tiny wire may add some resistance or reduce the tuned
bandwidth. In reality, the receive is so bad, you probably won't see
any differences.

Factory headphones may be impossible to get. without buying a second
phone.

Baloney. Such headsets are all over eBay.

I meant get an actual Huawei headset, but I gather I don't need that.

It would be helpful if you
would kindly disclose the maker and model of your phone.

Of course. It's a HUAWEI Fusion U8652, sold mostly by AT&T under
their brand. It has stereo radio with RDS I haven't got the phone
yet, it's still being shipped.

Should I try to find out how long the wire is on factory
earphones and get a headset with the same length?

No. While getting the length correct, the lack of a counterpoise
(other half of the dipole) is probably more important. In ham radio,
it's called a "tiger tail".
http://www.hamuniverse.com/htantennamod.html
http://pgh-net.com/ae3c/tiger-tail.html
I played with it on my Droid X. It certainly improved reception, but
it was still lousy.

Maybe for us that would make the difference. Maybe we could each buy
one of those rubberized cases for the back, and coil it around in
there, relying on induction?

It should be 300,000,000 / 88,100,000 meters long? Or half that?
About 4 feet? Or 1/4 of the first number, 2 feet? I"ve never heard
of 1/8th wave, but maybe that works too? 1 foot?

I'm thinking of an external RF amplifier, but
suspect that will increase the sensitivity to the point where it will
pickup computah noise from the processor (which is why the receiver is
nearly comatose). Good luck.

Thanks.