High-gain radio antenna?

Agree. Please post any solutions that you come up with. I took my 2010 to an audio store that has a very good reputation, and the owner told me that there really was nothing that could be done. It is the way the car is designed, with the antennae on the roof and in the rear window. He told me it would be a waste of money to buy anything to try to improve on it. So that was discouraging, but, perhaps, honest.
He said also don't bother having the dealer switch out the radio/and or
the antennae because there will not be an improvement.

 

If most of the Prius radios were weak, we would have heard from a lot of folks. Mine (the single-CD, no-nav version) certainly gets good reception of weak stations.

I'd look for something wrong in your installation. An easy test that you can do is to tune in a weak FM station, then remove the antenna (it unscrews). The station should get weaker or disappear altogether. If it does not change, then the antenna is not connected to the receiver. Probably not plugged in.

If the radio does perform better with the antenna than without, the fault probably lies in the radio, not the antenna. I'd visit the dealer, park beside a new Prius that has the same radio, and compare them. If you can demonstrate an obvious difference, they ought to replace the radio under warranty.

Fred

 

We have...there are several long threads complaining about the poor radio reception in the Gen III's (especially with the nav system).

 

Do we need to differentiate between XM and FM for the purposes of this thread? There are definitely a LOT of folks complaining about terrible XM reception (myself included), but I'll admit to not having followed the FM discussion as closely. At any rate, if there is a more powerful antenna solution for XM, count me in for sure.

 

I would consider a couple of other things first,

1- The antenna system has a built in pre-amp. there is a chance that unit could be bad, somehow not powered, or connected improperly. The antenna mini motorola plug could not be properly inserted into the radio antenna jack, and or the antenna coax could have been damaged during assembly of your car. These conditions would adversly degrade reception.

2- The shark fin will offer NO better reception capabilities than the standard antenna. In fact it will degrade reception slightly. This effect is only noticed when you are in the fringe areas of the stations coverage footprint.

3- Worst case, the radio itself is bad. Dealer fix.

Good luck, let us know what you find.

 

Yeah, I saw those with a search for "gen III radio weak." XM radio does seem problematic, and I should have asked our OP if it was XM or FM trouble. I assumed FM, maybe wrongly.

Most of the few FM complaints seem to have been back in July or earlier, with no follow-up on what they found wrong. XVS, is it FM or XM? And I'd like to echo Pat and SLKRam: please let us know what you find and which type of radio you have.

Fred

 

I wonder if the Gen II antenna

(a) will fit, and

(b) will provide a little better reception because it's longer (but I don't know if its wavelength is any different).

 

I think since many seems to be having reception issues with both satelite and radio, we should think outside the box.

 

Fred, no complaints on my FM radio reception its killer, but the XM sux! I'm not going to have any problem dropping XM when the freebee subscription runs out. Lots of good variety though.

 

What type of antenna did the Saab have? My guess is that it was a 30" long one, probably without an amplifier.

Antennas work best when they are the proper length for the frequency being used. About 28" is 1/4 wavelength for the middle of the FM band. If you have a favorite station that you want to optimize, calculate the length in inches by dividing 2800 by the frequency of the station in MHz. So a station at 100.0 Mhz would do best with an antenna length of 2800/100= 28 inches.

For more than you ever wanted to know about antennas, check out N4UJW ANTENNA DESIGN LAB - Ham Radio Antennas - Design 0r Build Your own Ham Radio Antenna . FM is about 3 meters, so you should scale their designs as required. An FM band antenna would be about 3/2 the size of the 2 meter designs they show.

Since the Prius antenna is so short, there is probably a tuning circuit to adjust the resonance of the too short antenna. If you mount a 1/4 wavelength antenna, then that tuning circuit has to be bypassed as it is designed for the stubby. I'd just bypass the entire preamp/stubby antenna.