In the last several years, I've found approximately three DIY designs for building your own FM antenna, since I don't model them myself. I wanted something roughly equivalent to the APS-13. It's the best consumer-grade antenna I've found, in terms of gain and front-to-back ratios. Quite a few radio stations offer some excellent designs, but they're narrowly focused on a particular frequency.

So, here are the links.

http://www.cebik.com/vhf/fm1.html is a thorough treatment of antennas in general. This link goes to the FM antennas. Page 4 and 5 are the extreme dxers.

http://sumtechantenna.freeservers.com/ is another great site. The ZL105 antenna is the FM version. However, this particular antenna is centered at about 105 mhz. For the US, the author of the site said to multiply all the dimensions by 105/98, or 1.07, to center it at 98 mhz. He said rolloff is different at high and low ends, so the center point can be adjusted easily with the math.

Brian Beezley's site is another excellent read. He models quite a few antennas for gain and reception characteristics, including the APS-13.

Another great site, much information about TV and FM antennas from KYES in Alaska.

More useful, basic information. Covers HDTV primarily, but it applies to FM reception as well.

Build an FM rhombic antenna: page 1; page 2; page 3; page 4.

 Materials_____________________________________________

These are places that offer the most reasonable prices on pieces for your new creation, assuming you can't find something local.

Texas Towers: Aluminum tubing

AirParts, Inc.: Aluminum tubing

DX Engineering: Connectors, clamps, baluns, cables, etc.

Ken Wetzel's low-loss balun construction.

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