Hai all.

My car radio is driving me mad. Basically I've changed the antenna itself to a new one, I've replaced the antenna cable and even put a signal amplifier somewhere in between. So all of the things you need to get reception are brand new. Yet the reception is really bad. When I'm in the town it works fine and a few channels are good enough to listen but drive 10-15 km away and it's all gone and those few channels you can even get have a lot of white noise.

The radio itself should work, I tested it in another car and came to a conclusion that it was either the antenna cable or the antenna itself that was failing.

What I do

Maybe the antenna length is wrong?

Does the radio have a local station setting? This setting can basically block weak signals, I believe it's for when there are frequencies that are very close together but are miles apart (in distance) overlaping.

Quote from lap traffic nz :

Does the radio have a local station setting? This setting can basically block weak signals, I believe it's for when there are frequencies that are very close together but are miles apart (in distance) overlaping.

It does but it doesn't really help as the reception is so bad that even the strongest signals are weak.

Maybe a poor connection then, even one strand of the outer shielding touching the inner core can have dramatic loss in signal quality. Has the coax been cut and joined anywhere? If so that's where I would start to look, or maybe the antenna is not earthed to the chassis correctly.

As I said the cable cable and antenna are brand new so I doubt it's in the connections.

How do you earth the antenna properly? That could very well be the case, iirc the reception was better when it wasn't earthed to the chassis

The earthing of the antenna varies by model/brand etc. Usually the at the base where it mounts on the body of the car should go something like, rubber boot, base, car body panel, serrated washer then nut. http://www.europeanperformance ... uge-geeignet.html/cat/109 this is the best I could find in a hurry, the close up pick shows the locking washer, this washer must contact bare metal to ground the antenna. I know it sounds like rust wanting to happen, but you may need to sand the paint off on the underside of the mounting hole.