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XM Radio Antenna Placement

bjryman

Member
I've read some conflicting statements in the past years about placement of the XM radio antenna. I have Garmin Zumo 550. When I installed it this time last year, it seemed that the consensus was that the antenna is much better placed outside the fairing due to improved reception. This is the same reason a car XM radio antenna is placed on roof if OEM installed and in windshield if aftermarket installed.

So I bought a neat kit from cyclegadgets.com that allows me to place the antenna on the Zumo unit RAM hookup, run the power off the cigarette lighter via a piggy back connector and then run the radio out to the AUX plug.
At same time I added Hogtunes 4 speakers, their AMP and the Tweeter bar.

Pic is below.

But as you can see the XM antenna is a pretty big fixture on the handle bar mounting bracket.

Reception is Great though. How about others here....have you tested reception outside and inside the faring? I could move my antenna under the faring, I think if I can find room given the AMP takes up a bunch of space

Thanks
bruce
 
I've got an 06 ultra and mounted my sirius antenna on top of the radio, under the fairing. Works great, no signal loss.
 
I've got the H-D XM unit that connects to the factory head unit, and it comes with a bracket that mounts the antenna inside the antenna, just under the left side of the windshield. I get as good reception as my car unit with the antenna mounted on its roof.
 
I tried it under the fairing. It didn't seem to get as good reception as a friend of mine. So I bought a mount that mounted it on the handlebars. It does seem to work a little better.
 
Thanks folks, the responses here seem to verify what I learned earlier....it depends:)

I might try moving it and see what happens for awhile

bruce

BTW, for some reason the system won't let me load pic here. It says I already loaded it on this thread:

Hawg Wired tweeter kit - Harley Davidson Community

Great, so how do I access the pics then for other threads?
 
XM will work better if you are in the south USA. The sats are over the equator
and thus higher in the sky the further south you go. Up north it's quite possible your body or metal bits may block the signals depending on the direction you may be traveling. XM also has terrestrial transmitters in larger cities that can be so strong you don't even need the antenna hooked up if you are near them.
 
I have my xm antenna inside my fairing and have had no problems. I rode this past year, doing the USA 4 Corners trip and had no problems with reception in any part of the country.
 
Yep I'm waiting on my new Dash mount from Harley and going to place the antenna in the fairing and see how it goes. I just want to keep things as clean and uncluttered as possible.

92366_08_M_2438f.jpg
 
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