"Doug Smith W9WI" wrote in message
news
In the U.S., the vast majority of FM stations use both
horizontal *and* vertical polarization (I think they call that "mixed
polarization" overseas) so a vertically-polarized car antenna works just
fine.

I believe they actually use circular polarization, so there's a 3dB loss when
received by a linearly polarized antenna. Still, I'm told this is almost
always a huge improvement over what you get with the transmitter and receiver
both using linearly polaraized antennas.

I don't think it'll make much difference.

I agree. In fact, as far as I've seen, unless you're running high gain
point-to-point links, it doesn't seem that matching antenna polarizations on
both ends matters all that much, since the fields will tends to have become
randomly polarized as they propagate and reflect anyway. (Of course, I figure
one of the much more experienced people here can correct me on this if need
be!)