[Vwdiesel] Radio

[LBaird119 at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/11/2002 10:14:59 PM Pacific Standard Time,
wn5p at yahoo.com writes:

> It depends on what type of "short" antenna you are
>  talking about. A quarter-wave antenna for 98 MHz would
>  be 2 feet, 5 inches  in length. A quarter-wavelength
>  antenna for CB is 8 feet, 6 inches. The reason most CB
>  antennas look shorter is because they use some sort of
>  loading coil at the base or center of the antenna,
>  which is nothing more than a length of wire wound
>  around a dielectric form to electrically lengthen the
>  antenna to a full quarter-wave. I suppose you could
>  modify one by removing the loading coil and cutting
>  the whip to the appropriate length.

  The antenna itself is less than a foot but you can see it has
extra wire wound around it.  The "mast" itself was missing and
the salesman put one on before we took the car.  Stations
will completely cut out now and then, making me think we're
either getting a bad connection to the amp, whip, or radio.
The part that makes me think the radio is goofy is the image
rejection.  It may not pick up 106.7 at any more than really
fuzzy, but it may be listenable at 104.4 and 107.1, and 102.5,
etc.  My experience has been that it's usually a bad radio
causing that.  :(  We'll see.  I don't have much time to look
at it for a few days.  I'm finally seeing a lot of work coming
in so I'm busy trying to earn a living again!

>  Sounds like either a problem with the antenna or an
>  ignition problem (motor noise reducing sensitivity). I
>  had a problem like this on my gas Nissan Sentra a few
>  years ago.
>
  I think the old 220 has a slightly low voltage problem or bad ground
somewhere to the radio feeds.  The old radio (audiovox) never worked
well in or out of the car.  The replacement one (audiovox again) worked
well in testing but not a lot better in the car.  It would be better at times
as well.  We didn't get a lot of stations then so it wasn't anything major.

 Thanks for all the tips.  Now I just need to get him a cartridge for
the changer and burn him some country CDs.  He's never had a
CD player before and actually sounded kind of excited about it
rather than intimidated.  :)
     Loren