I've had my car a grand total of about 18 hours and so far I onlyhave one complaint:

The reception on the XM stations is very spotty.

If I'm driving down a highway with trees on one side the stations fade in and out. The tree aren't even *that* close to the road.

Then, driving down tree covered back roads I may lose reception or I may not.
I have lost reception where there are only a few trees and then driven on back roads with many trees and had no problems. In other words, sometimes it doesn't work when I would expect it to and sometimes it works fine where I would expect to have some problems.

Is this normal?

 

Might want to search this specific issue on these boards as I remember vaguely a few other people complaining about this. If memory serves me correctly it had to do something with the positioning of the satellites and far east/west coasters had problems with signal reception because of it.

 

Doesn't sound normal. I have driven on country roads with tree all around and have no problems. The only problem is the few seconds after I pass under an overpass.

 

Satellite signal is line of sight. If something is blocking the Sat signal, you will get a drop out. XM's sats are low on the horizon, so the farther North you are, the recpetion is not going to be as good as someone in FL. Their satellites are in Geostationary orbit, meaning they stay in a fixed spot and move with the earth. And as I have said before, reception in dense areas, city and country areas, all depends on wiether there is a terrestrial repeater in the area.

 

Yeah, what he said!!!! I knew I read somewhere about people in certain locations getting shitty signal. Thanks!

 

I've had xm since i purchased my tl in 04 with no problem until about a month ago. I started losing the signal very frequently, at the time it was very overcast and bad storms so i dissmissed it as being the problem but for weeks now it has been clear and my signal is still very spotty. before this problem i very rearly lost the signal. any thoughts?