Radio reception in a caravan
One of my vices when away in the van is listening to radio programmes. Having bought a new Coachman in December, I have been to a number of sites and have been disappointed with the radio reception. In some instances, I cannot receive even the BBC national services clearly. Having checked the connections, I am surprised that they all appear fine and the unit itself seems to be a reasonable make.
Do other members experience poor radio reception generally, or is there something particular to recent Coachman caravans? I am beginning to think along the lines of a separate antenna. Thankfully, this seems to be our only issue; the van was well prepared and we have suffered no other issues.
Thanks for any feedback
Dave
Comments
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I've never really thought about this, on our swift which has an external radio antennae the reception has always been good all over the country and that includes hilly out of the way sites.
a simple test would be to see if your car radio gets good reception when on site next to it?
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Are you using the built in radio or a separate unit?. I use a Pure DAB radio alarm clock in the bedroom area and the tin box nature of the caravan makes reception very variable. I hang the antenna wire out of the window .
If you are using the built in radio do you have a separate radio antenna is it connected and is it extended?
If your radio antenna is built in to your TV antenna, again is it connected properly and is the TV amplifier turned on (and turned up).
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Our radio reception is normally good and comes via the outside status antenna just ensure booster is turned on
Just a thought, On our friends last Coachman the outside antenna was never any good for any type of reception but the latest has a status antenna,was there a problem with the previos model?
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Thanks for the comments. Annoyingly, the car radio is always crystal clear, so I don't think it is remote areas that we are visiting. Have checked the wiring and antenna booster, all seem OK. I will check again using a car aerial to see if reception is improved.
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We have new Coachman and tuning is not easy. The auto search seems to miss stations and so I manually tune. With older Status directional aerials there were poles that could be pulled out to improve radio but not on the new ones. Of course it is an analogue radio where the car might be digital. No Bluetooth either! Sounds great when you get it to work.
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Coachman radios have always come up for criticism, because they loose there settings when the 12v system is turned off.However if you follow instructions in the radio handbook it does work.There is a local radio station button the needs deselecting to pick up BBC.
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We’ve got a new Laser 675. The first twice out we were on sites with poor reception but I’m currently at Troutbeck which has perfect DAB and FM reception in the car but nothing in the caravan - it comes up with an aerial error message. There’s another new Laser on the site and they’ve an identical problem. I’ve checked all the wiring and everything is connected. So it has to be a design / manufacturing fault common across Coachman.
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I have a similar issue so asked Status for their advice.
Firstly most UK DAB signals are in the vertical plane so the aerial needs to be set vertical as well.
If you have the Status 570 then the white cable carries the TV signals so is plugged into the "ant in" input of the VP2 amplifier. The black cable carries the radio reception and needs to be plugged into the back of the radio, and this cable does not go to the VP2 amplifier at all. The red cable is the power to the antenna head and this needs to have 12V for both TV and radio reception.
I have given the cabling details but expect that these will be installed correctly (unless you have a cable re-organizer in your van!!).
Suggest you rotate the antenna head to the vertical, switch the amplifier on (to ensure you have the 12V supply to the antenna) and rotate the aerial to get the best reception.
Then sit back and enjoy the wine and view
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