Advice on boosting radio reception?

Tracker
1

Hey all - strange question I know but I find that the radio rarely seems to pick anything up for me, leaving me wondering if there’s something I am missing.

Is the best setup 1) to have the Tracker plugged into mains power and 2) to use a good long headphone lead, as I think that’s what’s used for the aerial, correct?

Also curious if it’s a regional thing. I’m in the UK FWIW, but have so far failed to pick up anything with it. I don’t think it’s a fault; just something I’m probably not doing right…

2

I get great reception in the southern US, and pick up all the extreme evangelical stations. These are soundbite gold.

I had a look through our support tickets and unfortunately the only complaints we have ever had on the radio were in the UK. This leads me to guess something is up with UK broadcast laws that make it incompatible? I don’t know why only the UK has problems with the radio.

As for improving it, a straight headphone lead will work better than a coil.

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3

I live in the middle of a city in Germany with plenty of local FM radio stations, and I don’t pick any either. All I get is a couple of spots of no-noise (almost silence).

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4

I wondered if it might be a regional thing - e.g. the Tracker not quite being calibrated to UK/European frequencies or something. Seems a bit unlikely though given the company is based in Poland…

Would be curious to hear if anyone else in the UK or Europe has got it working though.

5

Yeah after further reading I don’t think it is a UK or European only problem.
A couple other things:

  1. Make sure you have the proper radio region set in the General Config menu.
  2. Some regions seem to have poor radio coverage, even in the middle of cities.
  3. Also some countries, such as Norway, have switched entirely to DAB from FM, and you probably wouldn’t get any reception there.
  4. The FM reception is limited and it does help if you are closer to a radio transmitter. Even in a big city you may not be near enough to a transmitter to pick anything up unfortunately.
6

I’m in Italy and radio is working fine…

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7

Out of curiosity are you on mains power or running from a USB battery?

8

Working fine on both. I always use a power bank.

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9

Oh well now I’m just jealous :laughing:

10

I’m in the Azores islands, Portugal, and works perfectly here, clear and strong on all frequencies…

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11

I’m gonna make some accurate tests. However as stated above I think that most areas are now covered by DAB, digital audio broadcasting signals, so old FM radio channels maybe are weak in you area.

The small things to live in an not well developed country (mine, IT) :)… you got radio channels :slight_smile:

12

Radio doesn’t work well for me. Mostly static. I’m in Canada.

13

In northern Italy all is working fine :slight_smile:

14

Time to start testing what works and what doesn’t. I have a cheap handheld radio here too so am thinking if that can pick up any kind of signal, the Tracker should be able to as well.

I shall report back!

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15

I had this problem a while back, and the most helpful thing I found was Does the Tracker's FM radio need an antenna? (which is basically what @Mitch said):

Whatever you hook to Output jack port becomes the antenna. From our experience - straight cables work better than the spring ones.

So I plugged in an extra-long cable that connected to a wire that ran around the room. It made reception better, but it was still touchy.

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