In article ,
mm wrote:
Car stereo works just fine in my fiberglass sailboat. The "antenna" is
just a long antenna cable extension with the shielding stripped off of
the last 31 inches. It's tucked up inside the headliner inside the
cabin.

Well, I remember who gave me the ground plane story. It was a friend
who works in an ancillary part of communications. Don't know where he
got his information, but he could very well have been wrong.

He's right. The best place for a car aerial is on the (steel) roof where
it acts as a ground plane, as well as being as high as practicable.
However, field strengths are designed for much less efficient aerials - in
urban centres at least. So car designers will go for a 'prettier' look -
hence the appalling devices built in to rear screens etc which quite
simply don't perform as well in poor signal areas. But the other snag is
it's not really possible to use the correct length for AM reception as it
would be too long in practice.

Ideally, the aerial should be as far away from sources of interference as
possible - and in a petrol car this means the engine. But the downlead
should be kept as short as possible too which is somewhat of a dichotomy.
IMHO, the best compromise is at the rear of the roof, with a head amp to
make up for losses caused by the longer lead. In an ideal world you'd also
use separate feeder cables for VHF and MF.

--
*Is there another word for synonym?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.