Car radio reception in Castlemartyr, Killeagh, Youghal...

bobbysands81

Drive through these places all the time and can't get radio stations at all, just got a new car radio and the reception is still awful.

Anyone else have the same issue? If not then maybe it's my aerial.

chickey

drive through all these regularly and reception not an issue, might have to re-tune today fm a bit sometimes from my normal setting but thats about it

mordeith

chickey wrote: »

drive through all these regularly and reception not an issue, might have to re-tune today fm a bit sometimes from my normal setting but thats about it

I used to lose reception coming into castlemartyr alright.

Cheekynandos

mordeith wrote: »

I used to lose reception coming into castlemartyr alright.

I live in the area myself! Often get trouble with Cork stations for example, red fm or 96 fm, but RTE stations and Waterford stations (like beat on 102-103fm) work perfectly!

minterno

yes I have the same problems,im living in Castlemartyr and aside from rte, 2fm, 107,and local 104 the reception is poor even at my home which is on a bit of a rise,when driving to killeagh youghal 103fm county sound is very poor

thejuggler

Depends on your car radio I think. If it has RDS it should automatically retune to the frequency with the strongest signal at the time.
Its interesting at the time the radio franchises were set up in 1989 C103 (county sound) was advertised for North and West Cork and 96FM (Radio South) was for Cork City.
Presumably their coverage patterns were developed to cover their franchise area primarily.

Maybe east Cork loses out as a result? I believe they have fill in transmitters in Youghal though.

Stugots

There is definitely a problem driving through Killeagh just at the traffic lights. My car radio seems to be hit with static just at that point every time. There must be some sort of interferer nearby.

marno21

North Cork, West Cork and Cork City have all got high powered transmitters for the local stations (96/103/4FM/RedFM), however there is no main transmitter for east Cork, and east Cork relies on coverage from the city transmitters, or low powered transmitters as you get closer to Youghal. In areas between Cork city and Youghal, less sensitive car radios will struggle to pick up the city transmitters and the Youghal transmitters (bar the local community station on 104.0 which can be picked up on the other side of the county) will not be strong enough to make up the difference, Castlemartyr and Killeagh would be prime examples of this (before Killeagh used to have a relay transmitter for RTE TV but this has now been turned off). There is no solution to this as the stations will not be putting up any new main transmitters soon (also the fact that there doesn't seem to be many suitable places for ones in east Cork)

You should have no issues with RTE (high powered transmitter on high ground between Youghal and Dungarvan), or WLR/Beat (95.1/102.2, same story located nearby), and Newstalk have a reasonably high powered transmitter on Carronadavderg near Villierstown (WLR/Beat's transmitters have a power of 5000W compared with C103/96 in Youghal with a power of 20W).

Antenna

The original poster says 'can't get radio stations at all, just got a new car radio and the reception is still awful'


Along the N25 there should be no serious problems as claimed on a car radio

Note that most modern cars have an amplified aerial, if the amplifier loses power or fails, there will be very poor FM reception and no AM reception.
(signal strengths are so strong in the city you might not realise there is a problem when there)

The amplifier is usually supplied by 12V by 'phantom power' up the aerial cable (same as a TV masthead amplifier), if you put in an aftermarket car radio, you usually need an adaptor that inserts 12V

You can see one such adaptor here, the blue wire is connected to 12V via car radio, if its not connected to 12V the reception will be hopeless



These can be got on eBay etc as well as Halfords etc (make sure they match you aerial plug/radio socket), though can be wrongly termed as being an "Amplifier Booster" - they themselves do not amplify but insert power for an amplifier that is already there.

one example
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Car-Antenna-Radio-FM-Am-Signal-Amp-Amplifier-Booster-/400913243700?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item5d584a9e34#ht_1988wt_1348