I bought a radio but all I can get is static? There are a few possible reasons for this.
Radio signals travel for miles to reach your home and your favorite radio, but depending on the distance and placement of your radio, they may have a poor frequency angle. Radio signals bounce around and reflect off obstacles, such as objects in your home or your own body. There’s no way to guarantee which spot in your home will receive the best signal for your favorite radio station, but even moving your radio a few inches can suddenly improve the signal.
I test the same area on a table at home and sometimes find that another antenna an inch to the left picks up the signal better than another radio. Different radios have different antenna designs and the shape of the radio also comes into play. How tall is the radio itself? How high is the antenna above the radio?
Some antennas seem to work better than others. For example, Sangean and Studebaker radios have consistently performed well in my reception tests. The telescoping antennas that all of our recommended radios come with are often the best for receiving signals, but soft wire antennas also work very well if positioned properly. I usually get the best results if I run a wire antenna through the wall to replicate the telescoping antenna tests. It’s also easy to run it behind a shelf if you want something less noticeable.
You should also ask yourself about the station you’re trying to receive: how far away is it and what kind of setup is it? You can check Radio Locator to see which stations you can receive in your area and how far away they are. In testing in San Diego County, we found that major stations in Los Angeles and Tijuana were easier to receive than local stations that were much closer (probably because they had better antenna systems, since antenna height and design play a role in how well the signal carries). Across all the radios we tested, we found that a local Christian Contemporary station just 10 miles away was harder to receive than a major station twice as far away.
Because my testing is based on consistency, I didn’t hunt around to improve the signal for that local station beyond adjusting each radio a few inches on my test tabletop. But it’s possible, and you may need to try a bookshelf or a few different parts of the room to find the spot that best picks up the radio signal for your chosen station. Portable radios make this a little easier because you don’t have to worry about cords when finding the perfect spot, but I often found that even a few inches made a big difference in the radio signal.
