A half-wave folded dipole would definitely help you but you will also need a 300 ohm to 50 ohm balun to go into your coaxial antenna input. A better antenna may help you, especially if you are in a stationary position.
Most modern FM receivers (last 10 to 20 years) have very good sensitivity so the amp is unlikely to help you as it will amplify the noise and signal making it difficult for the receiver to lock onto the carrier. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is either ignorant or a scam artist.Īn inline RF amp will only help you if the sensitivity of your receiver is low. Sorry, there are no magic bullets when it comes to this stuff. However, a directional antenna for a moving vehicle becomes impractical for all intents and purposes. For example, if your antenna beam pattern has a 30 degree beam width, you will pick up all the desired signal but only 30/360 = 8.3% of the noise. The best way to 'fix' a weak signal is to employ a directional antenna that will give you an increase in gain because the limited beam pattern picks up most or all the desired signal but only the noise in a fraction of the environment. This is why 99.9% of the people are disappointed in their results. The problem with most of these is that if you have a very weak signal, a broadband RF amplifier amplifies the signal AND the noise, so your problem of a poor signal to noise ratio is STILL a poor signal to noise ratio.
I suppose it might be possible that your modern AM/FM radio in your truck has REALLY crappy sensitivity in which case a quality booster would help, but I doubt it. The only reason you should be using an antenna booster is if you have a very long run of cable from the antenna to the receiver (not the case in a Tacoma). The good ones are in the hundreds of dollars designed for the broadcast and aerospace industry. Most introduce so much noise into the RF line to make them worthless.
I've yet to see any 'consumer' antenna boosters worth the price of entry.
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