Make your car an antenna?
 

I have been trying to find a different antenna for the gen 2 pro but haven'thad much luck. I don't like the current antenna and to be hones my ultimate goal would be to get rid of the antenna totally. I have heard of people wiring the antenna into the car itself making it esentially a huge antenna. Is this truly possible? and if so how? I would love to do this so i can finally get rid of the old antenna.

i have only heard of antenna's being wired into the rear window or a rear side window (preludes have them like this) not the whole car
________
1949 Ford

so is this possible at all though? like wiring your antenna into the body or frame of the car?

Most FM antennas are approximately 31 inches long. Wiring up the entire car would have the same effect as not having an antenna at all since your radio isn't tuned to use anything longer than that. The in the glass type antennas on most newer cars is applied to the glass during manufacturing. You can purchase an on the glass type antenna, but they don't do too well as far as reception goes. Stick with the stock one if you can.

Re: Make your car an antenna?
 

The quick answer: "No."

The slightly longer answer:

Antennas are desinged to work by being able to "capture" the RF signal that is being broadcast in the air. In order to be able to do this they are designed to be a specific electrical lenght in size (related to the frequency of the signal you are trying to hear, usually 1/4, 1/2 or 5/8 of a wavelenght). An FM antenna can cover a wide range (as far as broadcast radio is concerned) but is it specifically designed to do so.

Why all the different sizes on the market: they have different internal constructions that make them very similar when it comes to the effective electrical lenght.

Can you make the car the right lenght? maybe, but you'll need some pretty specialized tools.

How come a paper clip works on my cheap ass radio at home? Because it is picking up a rather strong signal. When there is a lot of signal any lengths is likely going to pick something up... but it is when you are farther away that the length becomes critical.

I've heard on here that the antennas you stick on the glass do not work very well , but what about putting on two of them? would that help? And someone sells this one that is amplified and you can put in the wheel well and it gets great reception but he quoted $100 for it. Any ideas about these?

two antennas: Yes it can help, BUT you have to space them and make sure that the wire feeding them is the correct size and lenght. If you do it wrong the two can actually work against each other and cancel out the reception of the signal. Seeing as I do not deal with antenna design in day to day I can not tell you what the spacing would have to be if you have glass as the dielectric between them.

antenna with amp: is the antenna in the wheel well?? you probably need the amplifier just to get back the signal that is lost from having it buried under the metal of the wheel well. Remember, RF signals do not pass through metal at all.

IF i did two window strip antennas what about putting one in the front window and one in the back? would that be ok?

At that point it depends on how you combine the signals from the two antennas. If using a resistive combiner the loss in the process reduces the signal received by 3dB which is exactly the amount gained by adding the second antenna... so the net gain is nothing. Not worth it.

If not using a resistive combiner, then the gain can be as high as 3dB (or double the signal)... but in order to do that you would need to make sure that the co-ax cables and combiner are the right lenghts (not sure what that would be) so that they do not cancel each other out.

In my opinion it is just not worth it. Of course if you want to play around with it and find that it works better that can also happen.

Just my $0.02.

The only thing i've seen to connect to car antennas to one was at radioshack i have no idea how it works so i'm not which of your two senarios would happen, its a disk thing with three holes, two are for plugging antennas into the third sends a wire to plug into the back of the stario.

Dude just give up. Leave the stock antenna in place. You keep pushing and everyone keeps saying no. Just do what you want but IMO leave your stock one in place. Option 2 go buy an aftermarket one that fits in the stock hole that looks better.