No, I was told the shark fin also includes the AM/FM antenna, which is not as good as the brown wires in the window in my previous vehicle, or a dipole antenna. And there is a built in amplifier which may hurt more than it helps, if it is boosting noise from a weak antenna.
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Today's Radio Reception in the Car: Problematic
- Thread starter tylerSC
- Start date
No the brown wires in the window may no longer provide the radio antenna, as I was told it was now the shark fin antenna for the AM/FM reception. And the fringe reception is now weaker on my newer Toyota vehicle, and the HD does not lock on as well.
There used to be major overlap between DC and Baltimore signals in Northern Virginia and Maryland, but I would guess it may now be hindered somewhat by the emergence of translators and LPFMs. Like everywhere else. Haven't been up that way recently.
I don't think this is true in every case. I had a 3rd gen Toyota Tacoma with no rear window defroster and it only had a shark fin antenna. Reception quality on FM was okay, but it was definitely a downgrade from my previous early 2000s car with a proper full length antenna and aftermarket Pioneer stereo.
That is a list of the counties that have measured local radio ratings in the top 50 markets. But in states with more than one market, they are all batched together. In CA, Los Angeles, San Francisco, (embedded) Oakland, Riverside / San Bernardino and San Diego are all top 50 markets, and the list does not distinguish between them.This list from 2023 is the Top 50 market counties from @Michi's site:
I'm looking for a listing that shows, in text and not a map, each rated market and the county or counties that they are composed of.
It certainly seems that way.
I replaced the stick antenna on my Jeep with a shark fin so it wouldn't interfere with loading my kayak on the roof rack, and the AM reception (which was already bad) got even worse.
That was when I switched to SXM and Bluetooth streaming exclusively. I haven't used AM (or FM) since.
The car radios of the 1970's and earlier were way better on AM. Completely different designs. Antennas were actually part of the tuned RF circuit. How many here remember the "tune the radio to a weak signal around 1400 AM and adjust the trimmer capacitor" instructions? In fact, I am using one of those old radios with an AC power supply to feed an EAS unit. It's by far the most reliable, noise-free receiver I've found for AM.
Whether that's the main reason for AM's loss of listeners is debatable. But it certainly doesn't help.
Dave B.
I never in my life had to set up a car AM radio in that way. The only mention I ever saw about tuning to 1400 was because it was the default output frequency for FM converters in the '70s.
I'm old, and I definitely remember doing it on lots of cars as a youngster. The Delco radio I use today has one of those. Some quick googling came up with a service bulletin that details the process:
This was a Dodge, but every manufacturer of that era had one.
Dave B.
I'm 70. The oldest car I ever owned was a 1973 Chevy Vega. I put an FM converter in it, but never had to tune anything on the radio itself. I don't remember my dad doing so either, and the oldest car I remember my folks owning was a 1953 Pontiac.
I'm 68, but nobody I ran around with had new cars. This was also in South Dakota, where FM stations of my youth were either "the world's most pitiful music" (what we called it) or one religious station. AM was king, and it was the land of excellent ground conductivity. Twins Baseball on WCCO from 200 miles away came in great in the daytime. Top 40 pop or country from any number of small-town AM's. KAAY for Beaker Street at night. I was a radio nerd even then, so I guess I probably knew more about that little trimmer capacitor than most. But it made a big difference.
Dave B.
Have a 2018 RAV4. Can confirm
I'm guessing that is a European thing, because the radio display on my 2025 Hyundai here in the U.S. does not look at all like that.
Regarding the whole quality of radio reception issue, physics largely dictates the performance of radio antennas. Specifically, for a radio antenna to work well on the FM band, its length is ideally a quarter of a wavelength or more. At 88 MHz that would be approximately 33" long and at 108 MHz it would be about 27" long. The old-style whip antennas were in that ballpark. In contrast, the shark fin antennas are a tiny fraction of those numbers -- and physics dictates that those tiny antennas are going to be less efficient.
For comparison, SiriusXM operates at 2320 to 2345 MHz. At those frequencies, a quarter wavelength is about 1.25". So those tiny shark fin antennas work great for satellite radio, but they are going to inherently be mediocre for the FM band. That said, in much of the country, FM reception is now interference-limited, anyway -- you don't lose a station because the signal became too weak, but instead you lose it due to interference from a co- or adjacent-channel station obliterating what would otherwise be a listenable signal with a good antenna and tuner. So in those areas the mediocrity of the shark fin antenna isn't noticeable. But my experience is that they work perfectly fine within the 1.0 mv (60 dBu) contour of most stations, but are sounding pretty cruddy by the time I get to the 0.5 mv (54 dBu) contour. Note that 1.0 mv is the protected contour for classes A, C, and C1-C3 stations, and 0.5 mv is the protected contour for class B stations.
Yeah and now there's the Oasis on 94.5 north of Cincy too. I think its in Englewood. I remember listening to 98.1 WKQQ Lexington which was a decent rock station way back. 94.5 FM WLAP FM came in good too. The invasion of the FM translator has arrived. Class X radio is one example