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Car radios for FM DX

W

wildthangjim

In the 1980's I had a job that required lots of driving on rural highways in North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. I remember doing lots of FM DXing back then. Early in the morning in the warmer months, tropo was prevalent on many frequencies. Every summer I'd have several good Es openings, including receiving upstate NY and south Florida. After moving to Houston in the late 90's, strong tropo was very common on my wife's 1990 Honda.

Nowadays, neither of my cars (2024 Subaru, 2014 Audi, stock radios) seem to be set to allow distant reception (lots of LPFMs and translators around here doesn't help). Is this due to modern radios being fixed on what used to be called the "Local" or muted setting? I've looked around on the menus on both cars and don't see anywhere to change the setting. Is there anything I might try to improve things?
 
North and Central Texas area, 1980s. I had an underdash Pioneer Supertuner unit that was great at FM DX-ing. My car had a real external antenna (NOT in windshield!) and an FM signal booster I only used when far enough away from the big city powerhouses. The Supertuner was one of the first units available (to me) with the Phase Lock Loop (PLL) type tuner that eliminated drift. Once you found a signal, it locked on to it and wouldn't let go. I logged many a low-powered small town FM station back then. You could still do that then because that was before the FM dial got so crowded in North Texas (DFW) with all the station moves, power increases, drop-ins, rimshots, etc., etc. Not anymore, man. Not anymore. šŸ˜¢
 
My 2002 Hyundai Santa Fe does OK with Es but cannot get any of the scatter signals that the 4-element (+ TEF) pulls in. Not even Spokane or Grand Coulee 98.5 which are super-duper-common. The antenna is INSIDE the window and there's a 10dB booster that a mechanic installed.
On the other hand, my old 2007 Hyundai Elantra (RIP) was incredible on the in-glass antenna - AM too! Pulled Ms in with ease, worked several MASSIVE Es openings from Ellensburg...scatter out to 200+ miles, very sensitive. Drove through West Valley picking up KATW-101.5 Lewiston ID solid as a rock, plus KHTR-104.3. No enhancement.

How could I get my Santa Fe to enjoy that world-class sensitivity, as well as directionality? I'd love to pull in Spokane/Pocatello/Missoula/etc. in the car on scatter. In both radios, I used aftermarket Supertuners from Pioneer, yet the reception capabilities are different.
 
My old mitsubishi mirage with whip antenna would splatter like mad whenever there's strong adjacent on FM. It worked ok decades ago but now it hurts trying to listen to distant stations next to an adjacent translator. It did have a stereo indicator which I like about most cars tuners don't have nowaday. My wife's ford explorer has the sony system it does FM blending depending on the signal strength. It does blend the audio down alot to the point where it sounds like AM, but does filter out adjacent splatter or interference with good selectivity.
 
Many modern car radios will soft mute on weak signals. The frustrating part is this is just a software setting that can be disabled but most car radios don't give you access to change the setting. The aftermarket Pionner car radio I had back in the 2010s was great for dxing and the car I had it in was old enough to still have a full FM whip antenna, not one of those undersized shark fins you see on most new cars.
 
So I am financing a used vehicle now that I have returned to WA. It's a 2018 Buick Encore. The stock radio is incredibly sensitive. It's just as good as my portable TEF. Very little bleedover on FM. First-adjacent frequencies are easy to DX. 104.3 KHTR Pullman and 104.7 KCMB La Grande OR show up every morning on Tr enhancement. Noticeable increase in Walla Walla signals throughout town, especially 97.1 which can be full-quieting.
AM is also pretty good. 630 last night had KPLY Reno NV, on top with Fox Sports. With CHED defunct, the channel is pretty wide-open now.
 
My '23 Ford Maverick has a very sensitive radio- both AM and FM. The AM has a fairly wide filter so the audio sounds decent, at the expense of some adjacent-channel splatter next to the really strong signals. It uses a ~8" stubby mast on the rear of the roof, and I can't imagine that a fender-mounted mast would be any better. There is absolutely no vehicle-sourced noise.

I have an 2000-ish aftermarket Pioneer AM-FM-CD in my old truck with a 31" fender-mounted mast. THAT radio has a hot tuner.
 
I drove GM cars all my life because of the family discount and low mileage pool cars until my parent retired. The Delcos had the best RF stages, though a friend of mine had a Ford Mustang that had a comparably good radio. The 1961 Oldsmobile had the long telescoping antenna. My Father listened to some programs on WJR and was able to listen in the Daytime when we stayed at Crystal Lake West of Traverse City with the antenna fully extended. The first car with the windshield antenna that was very inefficient was a 1970 Impala. I had two clients who were engineers for Delco antennas and radios that told me it took a long time to work out the bugs with those DeLorean styled antennas. Hard to believe the DeLoreans could do time travel but not make a good car receiving antenna. :) The 1977 Monte Carlo was my first car that I drove with AM and FM. It had great selectivity and sensitivity and was great for FM DX during the early Fall inversions. That may have been the car that pulled in the Long Island Class As on Sporadic E near the Straits.
 
Best OEM radio: most of the 80s-00s Ford LED radios. Incredibly sensitive. The base LCD radios that were in E-Series, base F-Series, and CVPIs were not as good on FM, but identical on AM.

Best aftermarket radio: Pioneer Supertuner IIID. Had one in my GMC Sonoma, pulled all sorts of DX as a high schooler in the mid Atlantic. Had a Pioneer Supertuner (no IIID) in a later Honda Accord. Still good, but not as good as the newer models. Sonys seemed to have the worst FM/AM tuners.

Iā€™d be curious if Pioneerā€™s current head unit options have decent tuners in them still or if that got cheapened out for Bluetooth/USB/etc
 
seattlesarchiebunker said:
Iā€™d be curious if Pioneerā€™s current head unit options have decent tuners in them still or if that got cheapened out for Bluetooth/USB/etc
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I have a Pioneer AVIC-W8500NEX navigation head unit. It was Pioneer's top-of-the-line HU when it came out a few years ago, and it includes wireless CarPlay and Android Auto which is awesome. The FM tuner is quite good, definitely DSP based and includes HD Radio, but I don't know if it's actually the Supertuner IIID. If anyone can find out for me, I'd love to know. You'd think so, but Pioneer has changed hands a few times since the good old days and I don't know if they even promote their tuners with that kind of branding anymore.

In any case, the tuner in this current HU is decent but not as good as the Pioneer Supertuner IV I had in a previous vehicle. That one was an absolute DX beast and I think it was spec'ed even better than the Supertuner III. Pioneer didn't make it for long, maybe it was too costly. Mine had a built-in database of North American radio stations and would display the call letters and format from its memory. Unfortunately Pioneer came up with this bright idea right around 1996 and we all know what happened to radio right after that, so the database instantly became outdated.

As for AM, the reception is OK but the bandwidth on Pioneer's AM tuners has always been narrow sounding unlistenable garbage.
 
I am bumping up this thread. My Spring Break trip to Boise was unfortunately canceled when my Buick Encore started to shake and beep south of Kennewick on I-82. Turned out cylinder #2 was misfiring, and it needed a tow (thank the Lord it was covered by warranty) back to Yakima from Tri-Cities. Intake manifold, spark plugs, other things replaced, most covered by extended warranty.

Given catalytic converter issues right now, I am on the fence about getting a rental vehicle to make up this trip to Boise. It would be Mother's Day weekend, as I am not available any other time in May. I have AAA Premier and get Hertz discounts.

*Which car has the BEST selectivity and sensitivity for BOTH FM and AM? This also includes cars that have no engine noise on AM.* 2020s models only.
Chevy Blazer
Chevy Malibu
Ford Edge
Jeep Compass
Kia K4

These cars are the likely models provided by Hertz in Yakima. There may also be some Toyota sedans or SUVs. Let me know! Thanks! (I may also be renting to go back to Montana in June for county-wide/community yard sales and some R&R)
 
Lukeradio09 said:
is the SYNC 4 systems sensitive? Because I know the Maverick, the F150 and other Fords use that system.
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The radio in my '23 Maverick XLT is VERY good, both AM and FM. Unless you sprung for the Lariat (in '23; don't know about now), you got SYNC 3 and no HD or SAT available. The AM filter is pretty wide and sounds good, at the expense of a little extra adjacent channel splatter. It's a pretty good tradeoff for actual listenable AM audio.

Last summer I had a '25 Explorer loaner with SYNC 4; it was also good on AM and FM.
 
Was the Explorer better than the Maverick in AM sensitivity?
(I wasn't able to schedule another trip to Idaho this weekend. I'm in the process of getting ready to move this summer...to MONTANA! Near Billings)
 
crainbebo said:
Was the Explorer better than the Maverick in AM sensitivity?
(I wasn't able to schedule another trip to Idaho this weekend. I'm in the process of getting ready to move this summer...to MONTANA! Near Billings)
Click to expand...
About the same. It did have one feature I have never seen on any other radio- it displayed some, not all, station logos on AM. And these were not HD stations. Not sure how that works.
 
So if I were to do some AM DX on a current car radio, it might display the *logo* for 850 KOA, 810 KSFO, 670 KBOI etc.? Cool! Wish it could do that for the multitude of graveyarders. Identify it without a verbal ID, as if it was a RDS hit on FM...
 
crainbebo said:
So if I were to do some AM DX on a current car radio, it might display the *logo* for 850 KOA, 810 KSFO, 670 KBOI etc.? Cool! Wish it could do that for the multitude of graveyarders. Identify it without a verbal ID, as if it was a RDS hit on FM...
Click to expand...
What it's displaying when it shows you a logo is purely a function of what frequency it's tuned to and where the car is geographically, with the logo and station name derived from a database. The actual KOA or KSFO signal could be off the air completely and it would still display the data, because the data isn't actually coming from the station's own signal.
 
fybush said:
What it's displaying when it shows you a logo is purely a function of what frequency it's tuned to and where the car is geographically, with the logo and station name derived from a database. The actual KOA or KSFO signal could be off the air completely and it would still display the data, because the data isn't actually coming from the station's own signal.
Click to expand...

I had a Pioneer Supertuner IV head unit from 1995 that supported RDS and used some kind of database to display station info as you described. As far as I know the database was never updated though, and we all know what happened in 1996. It was a great feature in theory, but as I recall it became outdated before long. The reception on that tuner was insanely good, though.
 


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