Fm Radio Reception

[Willihc]

Dear MLOC friends,

 

First of all, may I thank the organisers for a fabulous Lotus in the Peaks. I have never been on a car run before, and it was such great fun - thank you

 

Now I would like to ask colleagues for some tips about radio reception. Mine is a very noisy sport 190, and I love the sound it makes. In fact, it is music to my ears. But now and again when driving from Nottingham to Ollerton through all those speed cameras, I like to catch up with the news. I have a Panasonic radio and reasonable speakers, and to be honest, I am not bothered about sound quality, I just want to hear something. I can hear Radio Nottingham when in Nottingham, which cuts out about 2 miles after Arnold. I know that reception was notoriously bad in these cars, but have any of you come up with solutions? - I could not find any in the forum.

 

I have taken off the aerial and given all the connections a good rub down to try and improve earthing, but it is still just as useless. I also went to Halfords in Mansfield to see if they could fit a DAB radio and aerial and after one hour of fiddling, they could not find any metal in my A post and gave it up as a bad job.

 

Any solutions out there for either getting some reception for an FM radio or fitting a DAB?

 

thank you

 

hywel

[Simon Mac]

The basic problem as I understand it is the lack of "ground plane".

 

You need a horizontal sheet of ground relative to the vertical-ish aerial, which is connected to the ground (negative) of the cars electrics. In a normal metal car this isn't a problem. In a plastic car you don't have this luxury.

 

Soooo I have seen people suggest lining the deck lid with metallic foil, ensuring it is some how connected to the battery's negative post. 

 

http://wiki.seloc.org/a/Radio_reception

 

The other trick, and it's what I do, is providing you have enough data allowance on your mobile phone contract is to stream over 3G to a Bluetooth head unit. Spotify / News / SatNav / .... should all come in perfect quality as long as you have mobile data signal

[Willihc]

Very helpful list of suggestions there - many thanks, Simon.

 

It makes good sense and the SELOC link was also great. I would like to keep the car as tidy and original as possible, so I will start with the longer aerial from a Rover 25 (which presumably just screws on the existing aerial base) and a ferric ring before trying the adhesive aluminium or duck tape.

 

If any one has any experience of fitting one of those dinky DAB aerials onto their front windscreen, please share especially and any tips of where it can be earthed to on the A-post without completely dismantling the cockpit ("where on earth do I attach the earth?" as I said to the man at Halfords!)

[Jonathan E]

I had one of the windscreen sticky dab aerials, complete rubbish! I bought one of these http://www.dabonwheels.co.uk/Kinetic_DRA-6003_FM-AM_DAB_car_aerial.html pretty much a direct replacement for the Elise bee sting type but also has a dab connection. Obviously you then have to run a dab cable back to your head unit but thats simple enough via the gear change opening into the tub then along the console up to the head unit. DAB reception is probably better in my Elise than in the Fiesta which has DAB fitted from factory. Only other thing I did was to make up a short cable to attach to a good earth point in the engine bay.