My dodgy antenna

[Jonathan Wolff <jon@domain.elided>]

Hi all,

I'v been meaning to update you all about my dodgy antenna for a week,
but didn't get around to it.

A quick recap.  I have a 164 with the radio antenna built into the rear
window demister.  There's a little (actually not so little now I've seen
it) box which somehow extracts the RF from the demister circuit without
zapping your radio.  I recently noticed that radio reception was worse
than normal, and that turning the demisdter on obliterated reception on
all but the strongest stations.

Anyway, I stripped out the rear seats and the parcel shelf and had a
fiddle around.  By moving one of the connectors to the demister I
managed to get a significant improvement in the reception, and when
turning the demister I just got a couple of brief bursts of hiss and
possibly a slightly degraded signal.  Unfortunately by the time I had
screwed the rear shelf back in and refitted everything it was back to
its old tricks.

My multimeter seems to have gone up the Swanee, so I couldn't track down
the problem any further but I suspect either a bad joint where the
little flat wire is soldered onto the rear screen.  Alternatively that
wire has a crack in it.  Interestingly this is bad enough to wreck the
radio reception, but not enough to stop the demister from working.  I'll
let you know what happens when I find time to go at it a second time.

Jonathan.

- -- 
Jonathan Wolff <jon@domain.elided>
Programmer
Argonaut Software Ltd.

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