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Stubby has had it's chance


pathfinder123

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Although I mainly listen to mp3's in the car, occasionally it makes a change to see what the radio has to offer.

However, since changing over to a stubby aerial it has been a bit hit and miss whether I could hear the station I wanted without a lot of background noise and fading.

 

One of my hobbies is amateur (ham) radio so messing about with antennas (sorry aerials) is something I am pretty familiar with. So I decided to compare the original bee-sting aerial with the stubby using some radio test equipment I have.

 

Sorry if this gets a bit technical... :scare:

 

Because the bee-sting is over twice the length of the stubby it captures more signal, but the biggest difference is in the bandwidth each covers. Briefly the FM band is from 88MHz to 108MHz, and the bee-sting has two peaks in it's performance, one at the lower frequency end (88MHz) and one at the top of the frequency band (108MHz).

The overlap in these peaks mean that it covers the FM band well.

 

However, because of it's much shorter length the stubby is sharply tuned only to the top of the frequency band (around 98MHz), which means stations on other frequencies are received very much weaker.

 

Although the stubby looks better on the car I find that it performs about as well as a "Chocolate Fireguard".

So the bee-sting is back. I guess you pay's your money, and takes your choice.

 

Cheers

S.

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Mine works perfectly, but its a different kind of stubby. It looks almost exactly the same as the standard aerial, but is somewhat shorter.

 

Ive tried for ages to find out what vehicle it is made for as I originally got it for the golf way back in 2002. I thought it was a honda S2000 aerial, but looking at pictures thats almost certainly wrong. Could have been a Fabia.

 

Ill try and have another look around.

 

Has anyone tried a lexus is200 aerial or maybe a new toyota IQ aerial - quite a bit shorter, and I guess they must work fine?

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you may find that the stubby you have is a copy,

 

the original ones from honda (the S2000 ones) are about 40 quid from honda and are very good, but the copies out there aren't they look identical but there is a transmission difference apparently. :shrug:

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you may find that the stubby you have is a copy,

 

the original ones from honda (the S2000 ones) are about 40 quid from honda and are very good, but the copies out there aren't they look identical but there is a transmission difference apparently. :shrug:

 

Ah, if someone would like to loan me their Honda one, I will test it.

I "promise" to send them the original one back ;)

 

S.

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If you want slightly smaller but still get good signal get a new shape corsa one, the have a coiled aerial which is great boost for the reception. Sorry this is the best pic i have of it as most of my photos are of the other side. Its a great flush fitting tho and works very well, probably better than the standard but be interested in you doing some tests :thumbs:

25092009362.jpg

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Yeah I have a shorter aerial on mine it seems and radio 2 reception is pretty poor.. alot quieter than the other channels. Although only listen to radio until the bose has warmed up and stopped skipping :bangin:

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you may find that the stubby you have is a copy,

 

the original ones from honda (the S2000 ones) are about 40 quid from honda and are very good, but the copies out there aren't they look identical but there is a transmission difference apparently. :shrug:

 

Last time I asked Sean at John banks Honda, he told me the S2000 one is £27 and the Civic one was £22, and even tho the part numbers were different, the part was actually the same.

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