DAB Quality Improvement - Aerial? (1 Viewer)

[Tom G]

I retro fitted a Kenwood DAB stereo to my V- Line 600, and had a sticky windscreen mounted aerial fitted. No problems with reception. Original aerial now not even plugged in!

 

[Graham Page]

Genuinely I spent a fortune on the last motorhome, buying and trying all sorts of DAB aerials, and fitted them in a variety of ways

In the end, I got hold of one that was pretty good, I mounted it to a metal plate which I when I fitted it as close to the middle of the roof as I could, I connected directly to the chassis with a 6mm square wire and used a signal booster to amplify the input signal into a plus £2k head unit

It worked, most of the time, but I had spent hours, literally hours on it and I could be bothered listening to my staff arguing with customers who couldn't undertstand that their new £150 ('ish) aerial could cost hundreds of pound to install depending on the motorhome and "No, Sir, sorry it still doesn't 100% guarantee you reception.

So we decided to simply say "No" we don't know of one that will 100% guarantee you reception and as I couldn't be bothered to go through all that again when we got our new camper last year, I didn't so I listen to the radio on the internet and rarely have any issues what so ever, nor do I get my wife asking "Why's the radio gone off?

Bliss

Sensible advice Eddie. I have a Hymer S650 and spent loads on aerials when I fitted a DAB unit and none of them worked effectively. “A class syndrome“ I guess as no real ground plain. Easy solution now adopted - Unlimited data on my phone and stream through the head unit using either direct USB to the head or Bluetooth (both work reliably). Just used the same approach in a hire car with a cheap vent mount to hold the phone in view driving from Zurich to Davos and back for work and it worked faultlessly for Radio and Nav. Simple cost effective solution!

 

[Otter Spotter]

Isn’t the issue with DAB that the transmissions are variable and mostly patchy (not enough transmitters) and the frequencies cannot hold all the info all the time so it doesn’t matter how much you spend on aerials and receivers you will still get crap reception a lot of the time.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Techhome]

Put one of these between the aerial and radio
Amazon product ASIN B09FQFGMY5

 

[Lenny HB]

Isn’t the issue with DAB that the transmissions are variable and mostly patchy (not enough transmitters) and the frequencies cannot hold all the info all the time so it doesn’t matter how much you spend on aerials and receivers you will still get crap reception a lot of the time.

When they first introduced DAB it wasn't very good now days I find the DAB reception far better than FM but I suppose it depends where in the country you are.

 

[Lenny HB]

I did fit a JVC external screen whip aerial to a friends A Class it worked very well.
It doesn't appear to be available anymore the only one I could find of that type is this one.

DAB external glass mount whip antenna +15db - InCarTec

External mounting glass DAB antenna whip with 15db gain. 3m cable terminated with SMB right angle female. This antenna is designed for a 12V phantom feed supplied by the DAB source up the centre of the coaxial cable.

incartec.co.uk

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Lenny HB]

Put one of these between the aerial and radio
Amazon product ASIN B09FQFGMY5

Might as well throw your money in the bin they are pretty useless.

 

[Swiss]

It might not actually be anything to do with your radio or aerial at all, try switching off /disconnecting your reversing camera screen and or dashcam, especially if you have a rear wireless camera, this is a well known issue, just search the net and you will see what I mean. My DAB will not work at all in my work van when the reversing camera head unit is plugged in to the power, whether the actual screen is on or not, so I had to install an in-line power switch. You may also need to fit some ferrite cores on the cables

 

[Gerry77]

Cheers, never gave it a thought that the outer layer of the roof is aluminium. Just need to find a convenient spot to fit it and gain easy access inside. Cheers yet again Lenny.

Sorry don't know, its a small whip aerial on the roof which is aluminium so doesn't need a seperate ground plane. Same aerial is used for FM and TV, TV reception is very good, they fit an amp for tv somewhere I've yet to find it.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Lenny HB]

Cheers, never gave it a thought that the outer layer of the roof is aluminium. Just need to find a convenient spot to fit it and gain easy access inside. Cheers yet again Lenny.

Your roof will have the GRP sheet on top so you need to connect the aerial earth to the inside of the roof. Mine has a big plastic cover in a top locker on the inside of the roof which also houses the GPS receiver for satnav. I just tried to get the cover off to have a look for but it was really tight and I didn't want to force it.

 

[Graham Page]

Might as well throw your money in the bin they are pretty useless.

Agreed. I tried those in both my Motorhome and my Jeep and they were both useless.

 

[Gerry77]

Your roof will have the GRP sheet on top so you need to connect the aerial earth to the inside of the roof. Mine has a big plastic cover in a top locker on the inside of the roof which also houses the GPS receiver for satnav. I just tried to get the cover off to have a look for but it was really tight and I didn't want to force it.

Thanks for having a look. You wouldnt have volunteered here in Cumbria today its a classic wet day all day and for the rest of the week then back to cold Minus temps! Oh joy!

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[TerryDunlea]

I doubt if there is a single Fiat Ducato ‘A’ Class with an integrated wing mirror Antenna , that works efficiently! It is a very poorly thought out design , and does not perform well for any type of Radio reception . I have found that the only real solution is to fit a rooftop mounted Antenna suitable for not only Am/Fm , DAB , but also GPS . It is essential to source one that is capable of being fitted to the depth of the Roof construction, similar ones are fitted to the Hymer models . You will find the results absolutely outstanding! It is a faff to get the cables from the roof to the dashboard, but a small price to pay !!

 

[Steve Wilson]

In 2020 I purchased an Adria Motorhome in which the previous owner had fitted a Pioneer radio with sat nav DVD player and DAB/FM radio. The DAB radio kept dropping out and I discovered that the DAB aerial had been incorrectly fitted to the top of the screen and not to the A post. Also the FM reception was poor, to solve this issue an after market had been fitted to a front wing as the Ducato aerial in the near side mirror had also failed. So far nothing working well. I first replaced all of the aerial with a single shark fin sat/fm/dab mounted to the roof, as this part of the roof is fibreglass I fitted a 150mm grounded disk to the underside of the aerial inside the roof, results sat and fm great dab still dropping out. So an improvement but still not good enough. I then came

across RW Badland aerials, talking to Adrian he made me another tuned and sprung loaded aerial, this replaced the shark fin again using the home made ground plane. Results were sat fm and dab now all good. The last aerial was £54 which included vat and delivery. Hope this helps

 

[Mad dog]

Do you have mirror protectors? Try without....

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Steve Wilson]

Why would I remove the mirror protectors which have a purpose when the wing mirror aerial had already failed and the second aftermarket FM aerial fitted to a wing gave poor reception. The all in one aerial I fitted solved the FM reception as well as the DAB reception which is after all the core of this post.

 

[Mad dog]

Why would I remove the mirror protectors which have a purpose when the wing mirror aerial had already failed and the second aftermarket FM aerial fitted to a wing gave poor reception. The all in one aerial I fitted solved the FM reception as well as the DAB reception which is after all the core of this post.

My reply is to the original post... Sorry to have upset you!

 

[Gerry77]

No I dont have mirror protectors

Do you have mirror protectors? Try without....

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Kannon Fodda]

To return to this older thread I did give up on any hope I would improve the DAB reception and learned to live with it being poor.

I don't have room on the roof at front of the van due to the solar panel so no way to try and fit an alternative arial up there. I tried a Halfords type magnetic aerial with wires looped out of the door up on the roof but that didn't seem any better. I did look at whether the windscreen type stick on aerial was worth it, but even in my car which has one of those the reception drops out too often. Didn't seem worth it, and I gave up.

On the PVC, centre front of the cab above the windscreen there does appear to be a predrilled hole, sealed with a rubberised black plastic plug. On some vans I've seen this used as a mounting point for an aerial. But the only mounting I can see available for this appears to be for standard AM/FM aerials on Ducato/Boxer, not an active type DAB aerial, since it's not prewired. All the DAB aerials I see prewired and rooftop type so shark fin or a vertical / 70 deg angled whip. Those whip angles wouldn't work at the sloping front over the cab.

There are so many wires behind the radio in the dashboard area that it is always possible something is causing interference. Yes I also have dashcam, but that has the ferrule thingy on it.

Not going to remove the mirror guards. They've already saved a more expensive problem a couple of times either from the oncoming delivery driver or that sticky out bit of branch.

Meanwhile an alternative upgrade last year was to fit a MiFi system with rooftop aerial near the back of the van. As I usually have plenty of data on that sim, I am able to stream onto the mobile phone which is wireless to the MiFi, and then bluetooths to the Xzent thingy. It's still far from perfect as the MiFi will also loose connections in some areas. This may be due to choice of the cellphone provider.

Bottom line. Have a load of stuff on a USB stick and listen to that whilst on the move

 

[Gerry77]

Well, when I purchased my new DAB unit a Kenwood Dpx 7300 DAB it came complete with an aerial splitter unit already fitted/ connected. When fitted the DAB tuning was non existent so I sought suggestions of how to solve my problem. I came to the conclusion that the aerial was the problem. Over the weekend I tried an aerial splitter I already had and bingo , more DAB channels than I knew existed. For the moment I will be happy with this as I have other upgrades I want to do.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I am amazed that this change achieved such a difference.

 

[huck999]

interesting article here: Why DAB is so poor

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Pausim]

interesting article here: Why DAB is so poor

The best quality I could find on the DAB list was for BBC Radio3 at 160-192 kbps which is probably still a bit of an insult to many music lovers ears. Bear in mind that CDs have a bitrate of 1411 kbps.

 

[Techhome]

Yes as I said on Sunday 8th January, a splitter amplifier will improve both Dab and FM reception or an amplifier if you only have one type of reception.

 

[ken D]

Had the same problem with my landrover freelancer when Bluetooth reversing camera fitted no dab signal .Read somewhere if you fit a ferrite magnet filter around the aerial cable dab reception was restored and improved .Purchased of eBay fitted near aerial reception restored

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}