Cars in the shop and.......

For a stuck on cooling fan and they gave me an 05 Outback 2.5I wagon to drive. The radio stations come in 100 times better than my GT. How's the reception on your sedans? Local stations come in horrible on mine. No window tint either.

my GT wagon has very sucky reception. others in the dealers lot have better.

 

they did all the checks recommended by subaru, but no better.

 

any suggestions on how to improve reception welcome.

My wagon has good reception except for a few stations. You really can't beat a mast antenna for reception, but for looks I like it integrated into the glass.

My reception is fine, but I made sure to get non-metallic tint when I had it done. We had tint on our old civic and I couldn't get any AM stations. What kind of things did they check for? Breaks in the antenna wiring? Maybe something split from the window to the radio?

i couldnt say. i honestly have not listened to the radio in 3 yrs. the rock/alt stations out here in the chicagoland area are unbearable. everything else just plain sucks. thank god for our trusty 6 disc in dash cd players

the reception on my sedan seems fine

Reception in my sedan is fine as well...holds the same range as my old SuperCrew too; however, my AM reception is much worse than any other car I have owned (no tint either).

Tell the dealer to check it out while it is in the shop.

I will have them check it out now that I figured out that it wasn't normal.

I didn't know if it was just the wagon that got better reception. I'll have to try another car at the dealership on the same radio station to prove my point.

Reception is decent, certainly better than my old Acura with an unamplified antenna.. However, I know from talking with my friends who work in the car radio design area of my company, that window antennas are horrid in comparison to a 1/4 wave whip antenna. The natural gain just isn't there and they have to run amplifiers.

 

The problem with amplifiers is that they amplify the noise too. So when the signal is weak and close to the noise floor, they do no good.

the reception on my sedan seems fine

 

I second that. I also get good AM reception too. I have one station that it seems like it's a little picky with, but other than that the reception is fine.

 

- Mike

mines fine

I read some sort of news article a year or so ago, so I don't remember where... Probably popular science...

 

But someone had developed an FM Tuner and antenna on a silicon chip. They had basically made the trace so thin, that they could coil up an antenna on the chip, and receive FM. They were talking about integration into cellular phones.

 

Plus, most am antennas and tuners are cheap anymore. The developers make more compromizes toward FM reception, and AM gets the short end of the stick, since AM ratings are so much lower than FM. They just figure that not many people use it.

 

I am just wondering if anyone like Terk or other antenna manufacturers are building an AM/FM/Satelite antenna array. something like a satelite antenna now, perhaps with a rubber whip an inch or two long, that would receive all three formats. Perhaps even a higher-gain 1900mhz antenna also, for cell reception... A single cable into the car, and a break-out for the receiver, Sat tuner, and a pig tail attachment for a cell cradle.

 

I think there would be a market for that. I'd put one of those on my car If I could eliminate the other antennas. I don't want to look like an undercover squad car, with 4 antennas hangin off the car for AM, FM, Satelite, and Cell individually.