RigasMinho

Is it just me or does your XM radio come in and out near the following:

Tall buildings - maybe 22 stories or higher
Mountain roads
Garages
Long bridges

Its kinda annoying but wondering if it happens to everyone who has XM radio

Tripnbeats

the underpasses i can understand but the tall buildings i dont....im in manhattan and have sirius off of the xm antenna and works fine.

1995hoo

This thread really belongs in the Audio subforum and hopefully the moderators will move it. But anyway, you'll experience XM outages if something obstructs your antenna's line of sight to the southern sky where the satellites are located. Garages are an obvious situation—you're either underground or under a roof and the antenna has no line of sight to the sky at all.

The other things you mention will all vary depending on the height and position of the obstruction and your latitude. I've had my signal obstructed by the 8-story buildings and trees on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol—there's simply not a clear enough view of the sky in the right two lanes along there. As far as latitude goes, when I took my TL to Cape Breton Island last month I found that trees and mountains were more likely to interfere with the signal there than they are here in Virginia, and the reason is that the satellite is lower to the horizon relative to the car's position than it is in Virginia (Cape Breton Island is roughly 46°N, whereas I live at roughly 39°N).

Some people do not experience these problems in cities if there are ground-based repeaters on the buildings (or in tunnels or on the underside of overpasses). Unfortunately, the repeaters aren't everywhere.

taskmaster

I had the same issues with XM before I put the Sirius converter in my TL. Like Tripnbeats, I have no problem with Sirius.

FWIW - my understanding is that Sirius's birds are higher in the sky than XM's. This gives Sirius a bit of an advantage with their signal.

BHump

There are terrestrial repeaters deployed by both XM and Sirius that should mitigate the loss of signal due to tall buildings and other obstructions.

But, realistically, it is a satellite radio service, so your signal / antenna can be obstructed. 99% of the time, I have a signal (commuting in NoVA and DC).

say when

I live in the mountains and mine works 95% of the time crystal clear.

Privdog

in case it wasn't known, Sirius and XM are now officially merged as Sirius XM Radio Inc. I believe is the new name.. Hopefully we will all benefit from it, personally I would like better sound quality and ability to choose the channels I want.. I can only hope.. :-P

Adobeman

I find even heavy tree foliage will cause it to cut out. Same trees in the winter (no leaves) don't cause a problem. Geographical location with respect to the sats AND terrain will make a difference.

YeuEmMaiMai

my sirius ant is stuck to my sunroof. it works like a champ there

Will Y.

Wow, interesting question right now.
I only had minor XM reception interference under tunnels and in very wide overpass situations (i.e. under 8-12 lanes of the I-405).
More recently in the past two or three weeks, the reception seems to have degraded and XM cuts out under overpasses that did not previously affect it- it's almost as if XM lost one satellite out of three.

Tripnbeats

The merger was announced on sterns show the day after it occured....the dude Mel who owns the companies was on the show breaking down what people wanted to know about how its going to work with stations. for now he said they are going to charge a fee thats like say 5 a month and u get a bunch of xm stations through your sirius receiver and vice versa, he continued to say in 2012 or somewhere in that time frame they will make a unit that combines both services but after the satellites have been programmed for integration.

RigasMinho

Yeah - weird man. I feel the same way where 2 years ago i rarely ever lost coverage. But now it cuts off every now and than.