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Today's Radio Reception in the Car: Problematic

T

tylerSC

In recent years, fringe reception in motor vehicles has become more problematic, and there seems to be a perfect storm occurring, on both the transmission and reception end. On the transmission side, there are more translators and low power stations on the same or adjacent channels, causing interference. And on the reception side, most vehicles now have those aesthetically pleasing shark fin antennas, which are nice to look at, but have poor reception.

I recently upgraded to a new Toyota vehicle with the shark fin antenna and HD Radio, with the video screen. And I believe it has a built in amplifier. But I believe the amplifier may be boosting noise, as the radio does not lock onto HD signals as well as my previous vehicle, which had the brown antenna wires in the rear view window. It would seem these antenna wires in the window, or the basic stick antenna pull in better fringe reception in the car. The shark fin seems to have weaker reception capability.

Is it possible to replace the shark fin antenna with a dipole style antenna? I see Amazon sells some car antennas with a shark style base but which also have the dipole emerging from the shark base. Would this be an improvement? Is there a local Upstate car audio dealer that can install radio antennas?

With an overcrowded dial and poor performing cosmetic style antennas, a perfect storm of weak radio reception in cars has apparently emerged.
 
It just seems these shark fin style antennas don't pull in fringe signals as well as the dipole antennas or the brown wires in the window. And the amp is just boosting noise. So fringe reception may be impacted, particularly the HD Radio signals. Looking to retrofit with a dipole type antenna, if possible.
 
I have a 2020 Toyota Sienna van with factory HD receiver. It does not have a shark fin antenna but rather the antenna(s) are located in various windows/body panels around the van (according to the owners manual). Reception has been very reliable. In HD mode I can get stations as far away as 100 miles before fade out becomes an issue. Normal FM works a few miles further although with some interference.

I also have a 2025 Hyundai Elantra N with HD which also has been very reliable around the metro Phoenix area. I haven't been very far out of town yet in that car so don't have any results to see if it has the same range as the van. It does have a shark fin antenna.

The ranges I mention here have been between Phoenix and Tucson which is largely flat. The transmitting antenna's are located on a low mountain south of metro Phoenix with a more or less straight shot towards Tucson. The signals fade out just prior to reaching Marana which is on the very NW part of the Tucson metro. I suspect the range would be shorter if traveling north towards Flagstaff since that area is mountainous. Haven't had either vehicle west of Phoenix (towards Blythe, CA) yet but would guess I could listen without issue most of the way to the Colorado River since there are no high mountains in between.

All in all it seems HD is about as durable as regular FM in this part of the country.
 
tylerSC said:
Looking to retrofit with a dipole type antenna, if possible.
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What is possible will depend on exactly what car you have.
The 2025 Rav4 does not have the means to change the antenna. But the 2013-2016 Rav4 has a simple screw on antenna that can be changed with no tools, or perhaps a simple wrench.
 
landtuna said:
I have a 2020 Toyota Sienna van with factory HD receiver. It does not have a shark fin antenna but rather the antenna(s) are located in various windows/body panels around the van (according to the owners manual). Reception has been very reliable. In HD mode I can get stations as far away as 100 miles before fade out becomes an issue. Normal FM works a few miles further although with some interference.

I also have a 2025 Hyundai Elantra N with HD which also has been very reliable around the metro Phoenix area. I haven't been very far out of town yet in that car so don't have any results to see if it has the same range as the van. It does have a shark fin antenna.

The ranges I mention here have been between Phoenix and Tucson which is largely flat. The transmitting antenna's are located on a low mountain south of metro Phoenix with a more or less straight shot towards Tucson. The signals fade out just prior to reaching Marana which is on the very NW part of the Tucson metro. I suspect the range would be shorter if traveling north towards Flagstaff since that area is mountainous. Haven't had either vehicle west of Phoenix (towards Blythe, CA) yet but would guess I could listen without issue most of the way to the Colorado River since there are no high mountains in between.

All in all it seems HD is about as durable as regular FM in this part of the country.
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Phoenix is one of the more unusual cities I've lived in or visited in that just about all of the FMs can cover the entire market and thensome from their South Mountain perches. I think the only other major city I've been in with that kind of coverage is Las Vegas, NV.

While I've never had a chance to play with a radio with a "shark fin" antenna, I can make some comments on distances based on my numerous trips around Arizona and California in the past using both portable and car radios.

First, you're right about the trip to Tucson. While a few Phoenix FMs can barely make it (with a lot of fuzz) into Arizona's second largest city (KNIX-FM immediately comes to mind), the translators and LPFMs down there now do make receiving any Phoenix signals pretty much hopeless.

Heading north on I-17, the Phoenix stations become fuzz boxes just north of Black Canyon City but return in momentary full force around Cordes Junction, along with many of the Flagstaff and Prescott offerings. You completely lose all of the Phoenix stations when you climb down into the Verde Valley but they reemerge briefly as you climb out of it on the northern end.

Heading west of Phoenix on I-10, You have good signals until about Tonopah and then things get pretty fuzzy. While they are nowhere near as high as the mountains in northern Arizona, you do go around some mountains traveling to Quartzsite and then to Blythe, CA, which, pretty much end most of the Phoenix FM signals on the road trip.
 
I drive a 2017 Dodge Grand Caravan with a roughly 30" rod antenna. Reception is great. The South Mountain stations all make it to at least to Wickenburg, and some, notably KSLX, are at least audible to Wikieup on US 93. The AMs with the best signals (550, 620, 910, 960, 1100) are all good to Wickenburg but not much further.

Where I live (NE Mesa), the Tucson stations are all blocked by San Tan Mountain, about 25 miles south of me but directly in the path. If I drive even a few miles west, they start coming in.

My previous car, a 2014 Nissan Versa, had a shark-fin antenna. FM reception was almost nonexistent more than 50 miles from South Mountain, and AM was only a bit better.
 
KeithE4 said:
I drive a 2017 Dodge Grand Caravan with a roughly 30" rod antenna. Reception is great. The South Mountain stations all make it to at least to Wickenburg, and some, notably KSLX, are at least audible to Wikieup on US 93. The AMs with the best signals (550, 620, 910, 960, 1100) are all good to Wickenburg but not much further.

Where I live (NE Mesa), the Tucson stations are all blocked by San Tan Mountain, about 25 miles south of me but directly in the path. If I drive even a few miles west, they start coming in.

My previous car, a 2014 Nissan Versa, had a shark-fin antenna. FM reception was almost nonexistent more than 50 miles from South Mountain, and AM was only a bit better.
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While off-topic, your comments about AM reception interested me very much. When I first visited Arizona in 1971, you could hear KOY on an AM-only Chevy Chevelle car radio almost all the way to Blythe, even with Yuma's KBLU sometimes bleeding in. KPHO 910 (now KGME) probably would have made it into Blythe during the daytime were it not for Mexicalli's XEAO-AM being on the same frequency and causing interference on even the best car radios. What I'm saying is that distance reception on AM car radios has really come down since I first visited the state in 1971 and I suspect most of that loss has occurred within the last three decades.
 
ted chittenden said:
Phoenix is one of the more unusual cities I've lived in or visited in that just about all of the FMs can cover the entire market and thensome from their South Mountain perches. I think the only other major city I've been in with that kind of coverage is Las Vegas, NV.
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Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Des Moines, Kansas City, Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Miami, Orlando, NYC, etc., etc. Anywhere there are not lots of San Francisco like obstructions and irregular terrain gets good coverage.
 
ted chittenden said:
While off-topic, your comments about AM reception interested me very much. When I first visited Arizona in 1971, you could hear KOY on an AM-only Chevy Chevelle car radio almost all the way to Blythe, even with Yuma's KBLU sometimes bleeding in. KPHO 910 (now KGME) probably would have made it into Blythe during the daytime were it not for Mexicalli's XEAO-AM being on the same frequency and causing interference on even the best car radios. What I'm saying is that distance reception on AM car radios has really come down since I first visited the state in 1971 and I suspect most of that loss has occurred within the last three decades.
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IIRC KOY was on 550 kc in 1971 and could cover a great portion of the state.
 
landtuna said:
IIRC KOY was on 550 kc in 1971 and could cover a great portion of the state.
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550 at night does not even cover the whole metro area. Daytime it is marginal in Tucson, and even was decades ago with lower noise levels. It is not very listenable at all up towards Prescott.
 
davideduardo said:
Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Des Moines, Kansas City, Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Miami, Orlando, NYC, etc., etc. Anywhere there are not lots of San Francisco like obstructions and irregular terrain gets good coverage.
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Most of those cities I have not visited and therefore I can't comment on them. I visited Dallas once for a blind convention back in 1986, but I stayed inside a hotel in Irving (by the airport) and never got to visit the Dallas suburbs to see how well FM radio did there. I did visit Atlanta once (my late uncle lived in Dunwoody) and noted that the FMs did a lot better at covering the market than the AMs. I visited Washington, D.C. once and stayed at a hotel over the border in 1981. While the D.C. stations made it to our hotel okay, Baltimore stations could be heard in the background on both AM and FM, and, interestingly, the station licensed to Bethesda, MD, had a hard time getting into the D.C. market.

In the Los Angeles area where I was born and partially raised, while the local FM outlets could be heard inside the city and the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys pretty well, they had a hard time penetrating the Santa Monica mountains between Hollywood and the valley and then the mountains between Burbank and Pasadena, specifically Sunland and Tujunga where I lived at the time. And that is why I would say that the L.A. FM stations didn't cover the entire L.A. market very well.

I would also say the same thing about the San Diego stations. While it's true that the FM outlets (mostly) covered the city fairly well, they had a harder time, depending on atmospheric conditions, covering the inland valley (El Cajon and eastward) as well as northern county towns like Encinitas where two of my mom's sisters lived. And there were parts of downtown San Diego where some stations, depending on the location of their transmitters, did wind up being somewhat fuzzy.
 
davideduardo said:
550 at night does not even cover the whole metro area. Daytime it is marginal in Tucson, and even was decades ago with lower noise levels. It is not very listenable at all up towards Prescott.
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When I first moved to Arizona and was going to the school for the deaf and blind in Tucson, 550 KOY was one of only three Phoenix radio stations I could receive relatively clearly from the campus. (The others were KTAR at 620 kHz and KJJJ (now KGME) at 910 kHz). Taking my old Realistic AM/FM/SW/air/police band receiver to northern Arizona, KOY was a distant but listenable signal in Prescott and then going north through the Verde Valley to just south of Flagstaff. Where the station had its strongest distance reception was heading northwest from Wickenburg on U.S. Route 93 towards Kingman--KOY's signal could be heard quite well along that route until you came to the Nevada border.

The point I am making (and I think it still stands) is that today's car radios do not have the distance reception capabilities of their predecessors, especially on the AM band! No wonder AM outlets are having problems with loss of listeners!
 
The shark fin antenna on the roof is used for satellite, not AM/FM.

Many vehicles today use the rear window defroster grid as the radio antenna. That's why pickup trucks are the last vehicles which still have a traditional whip antenna mounted on the fender, because they don't have a rear window defroster.
 
I wonder how things are going now in some of the rural areas after the invasion by all the translators. I'm talking about rural counties outside the rated metros, but where a rated market's major FM stations came in clearly enough that that's what most people there listened to. I've heard occasional mentions that people can no longer pick up stations at all that used to come in clearly that everyone there listened to.

I used to live about 7 miles south of downtown Cincinnati, where I could pick up 94.5 from Lexington pretty clearly. For several years when it was WLAP-FM, that was my go-to station, and other people in the area also listened to it. There's no way you can pick it up there now, after they built a translator on 94.5 for WLW (as if WLW had any signal problems before). The translator actually completely jams what used to be a very usable signal.
 
kevtronics said:
The shark fin antenna on the roof is used for satellite, not AM/FM.

Many vehicles today use the rear window defroster grid as the radio antenna. That's why pickup trucks are the last vehicles which still have a traditional whip antenna mounted on the fender, because they don't have a rear window defroster.
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Kev, I wish that was the case with our cars! Both of them exclusively use the shark fin for AM/FM/Sirius. The VW head unit has excellent FM/HD FM reception, the AM not so much. The Toyota is just absolutely terrible on all bands, but being my wife's car she doesn;t care- she is all about podcasts anyway.
 
tylerSC said:
It just seems these shark fin style antennas don't pull in fringe signals as well as the dipole antennas or the brown wires in the window. And the amp is just boosting noise. So fringe reception may be impacted, particularly the HD Radio signals. Looking to retrofit with a dipole type antenna, if possible.
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to know if a classic fender-mount antenna would work correctly with the current factory radio. Aftermarket companies like Scosche and Metra make them, or you might even try using a Toyota OEM antenna made for previous model years. IIRC there were still Toyotas being made with rod antennas up to around 2008~2010 and parts for them should still be available.

Of course, you'd have to drill a hole in the fender to find out. Or test with an aftermarket bracket-mount version if there's one that fits your vehicle.
 
I am financing a 2018 Buick Encore. The FM reception is excellent. It is close to my TEF6686 on sensitivity. KHTR-104.3 Pullman and KCMB-104.7 La Grande OR are common catches here in the western neighborhoods of Yakima. KIRO-97.3 Seattle/Tacoma is in all day, weak but audible, at 89 miles over a multitude of mountains.
AM is decent, but it is noisy on several frequencies, and the sensitivity drops like a rock after 1200khz or so. Any way I could possibly fix this? I barely get anything outside of locals between 1300-1500 khz, even at night. Yet KRVN-880, KTNN-660, CBW-990, a weak WHO-1040, and several others have been heard on the car radio. My 2007 Hyundai Elantra with a Pioneer Supertuner III had a very sensitive AM radio and could easily pull in SK/MB on AM at night, plus KSTP-1500 and even WBBM Chicago floating under KKOH.

However, it may be a moot point. The car has given me problem after problem since I signed the lease. It is in the shop with a belt issue, which resulted in overheating. I am disappointed in this vehicle...after only 1500 miles.
 
kevtronics said:
The shark fin antenna on the roof is used for satellite, not AM/FM.
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And a miserable performer that shark fin is here in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont/New Hampshire. Dense tree cover in summer and foothills of both the Green and White Mountains (and other random peaks) all year round all make for lots of SiriusXM dead spots on all but the interstates.
 


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