Standard radio reception

[kent0464]

I’ve got a question, my car is a 17 Mustang GT w/pp, there’s a handful of local radio stations that I enjoy listening to, but that is spoiled by extremely poor reception. Is this a “thing” with these cars? Or is it possible the exterior antenna was not connected at the factory? I have searched and didn’t come up with an answer. Navigation etc works flawlessly.
I also have a 17 F150 3.5 tt eco and it picks up the radio stations flawlessly.

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[onlyturbo]

I have a 2015 GT pp, the FM reception is good on mine, but I noticed a lot of white noise on the AM station I listen to (1130 kHz Bloomberg)

 

[Nagare]

Never noticed any issues like that on mine either. Might be worth mentioning to your dealer to see if they can cover it while you're still under warranty.

 

[rocknstang]

I had posted a similar question. Response I got was that the radio reception in these cars was not great. FWIW...

https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/threads/hd-radio-poor-reception.98650/

 

[2014ShelbyGT500]

I have a 2019 with the same problem. I’m a physicist & electrical engineer with antenna experience and I think the problem on the hard top versions of this car are due to the antenna being in the rear glass (back glass or back windshield) and the back glass has a very low slope on it.

Convertible models have a real monopole unidirectional antenna on the right rear fender. The monopole unidirectional is the traditional or variant of a steel whip sticking up from a fender. I’m going to bet they don’t have these issues. My 14 Shelby GT 500 has a similar antenna and it picks up stations fine. I have tested the two cars side by side to verify this by tuning to the same station in each car.

I have discovered that the rear glass antenna is quite directional. Meaning it picks up better if oriented in a certain direction. Kind of hard to keep it pointed in one direction if you’re driving!!!

The steel whip antennas don’t suffer from this issue. I’m betting on the other vehicles mentioned that the antenna is the typical steel whip type antenna on a fender.

I like to listen to clear channel AM radio at night. This car has horrible AM reception depending upon where the back glass is pointing. As an example WLW and WCKY (700 and 1530) in Cincinnati come in fine as long as I am driving south or north where I live. That means the rear window is facing directly North/South. However I can make a left or right 90 degree turn and lose the station totally!! Going East/West only the edge of the rear glass is pointing N/S. Cincinnati is directly North of where I live. So to get good reception I have to have the back or front of the car pointing North/South so that the antenna is actually pointing North.

Think of a sheet of plywood as the antenna. The area (face) of the plywood must point N/S for it to work. If you turn the thin edge of the plywood N/S it quits working!

The only way I know to fix this is to install a real antenna on the fender and hook it into the radio. I’m going to look into doing this if the antenna plug is the standard type plug I’ve seen my whole life (59 years old). The antenna made for the convertible might be a direct plug in too if the connection is weird.

BTW, the best antenna for FM reception is the standard 31” whip antenna. 31” is the quarter wavelength for 98MHz the midpoint of the FM band.

For AM, the longer the better since 1/4 waves for AM are on the order of multiple lengths of football fields!

Also as a 70’s child, GM put antennas like this in the windshield. If the front glass had a slope less than 45 degrees the antenna sucked! If it was a pickup truck with the windshield nearly 90 degrees they worked great!!! The slope on our back glass is the antenna killer here.

Hope this helps.

Michael

 

[Michael_vroomvroom]

I have a 2019 with the same problem. I’m a physicist & electrical engineer with antenna experience and I think the problem on the hard top versions of this car are due to the antenna being in the rear glass (back glass or back windshield) and the back glass has a very low slope on it.

...

The only way I know to fix this is to install a real antenna on the fender and hook it into the radio. I’m going to look into doing this if the antenna plug is the standard type plug I’ve seen my whole life (59 years old). The antenna made for the convertible might be a direct plug in too if the connection is weird.

Interesting. Please update if you look into this further. I would also like to have better reception on my radio.

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