FM Radio reception

[Mark]

My coupe has always had poor fm reception. Recently it’s almost completely gone.
Have now finally managed to sort it.

So first of all I got a good quality aerial. Those cheap eBay electric aerials just never seemed to work.
I bought an old stock part that fitted the steep angle on the rear wing where mine is fitted. It’s Japanese and very well made.
Secondly I replaced the coaxial cable from aerial to radio. I used domestic tv cable and fitted the correct car type connectors. I also routed the cable away from other wires, wherever possible.
Anyway it works perfectly now everywhere.

[Theo]

Good news that your car radio now works well. When restoring my car, I decided that I didn't like having an aerial mounted on the rear wing (spoils the lines of the car and its symmetry I thought  ) so I got rid of the aerial and welded up the hole. "I know a lot about aerials" I told myself "so I can replace it with something unobtrusive".  How wrong I was! I first tried using the rear window demister, Mercedes do that so if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me. Didn't work! Then I created a hidden aerial in the A-pillar molding. Worked reasonably OK until the molding was put fully back in place. Then I bought an amplified aerial that sticks to the top of the windscreen. Reasonably unobtrusive and the little red power LED gives some ambient lighting in the Gamma  Works OK as an aerial but not as good as a proper external aerial.

But if I may be a bit pedantic here, your aerial would have worked even better if you used the proper radio aerial coaxial cable with 50 ohm impedance.  TV cable has a 75 ohm impedance which will degrade the signal from your aerial. 50 ohm cable is used in radio transmitter antenna connections, many measurement devices and in data communications (Ethernet). 75 ohm coaxial cable is used to carry video signals, TV antenna signals and digital audio signals.

[Mark]

Theo,
I also tried other hidden aerials as I don’t like the wing mounted ones.
Also couldn’t find one that worked.
It did occur to me though that perhaps a roof aerial would look and work best of all.

Didn’t know that about the coaxial cable. I will definitely change it. It’s seems quite hard to get anything that’s good quality though.

[inthedark]

Most cars that use a roof aerial
will use a long extension lead
Should be available from the spares
department or accessories shop.

[Theo]

Didn’t know that about the coaxial cable. I will definitely change it. It’s seems quite hard to get anything that’s good quality though.

Something like this should be OK https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/50-OHM-VERY-LOW-LOSS-COAX-CABLE-S400-LMR400-Equivalent-Amateur-Radio-HQ-LOT/332483525479