Satellite reception weak

[bhal212]

Does anyone else experience a temporary (1 second) loss of radio signal whenever they are even remotely near tall trees?

My wife's Wrangler (Uconnect 4c) doesn't do it, and neither did her Grand Cherokee (5), driving in basically the same areas, so I believe it's specific to this truck.

Could my antenna be defective, or perhaps loose? It's a small problem to have, of course, but an annoying one.

 

[44Dan44]

My usual route makes the satellite all but useless so I cancelled the subscription in the Pacifica, will end up the same for the truck. Hard to believe the antenna are so weak but tree alley kills it.

 

[44Dan44]

In addition to blocking satellite reception, tree alley presents other hazards

 

[bhal212]

That's wild!

 

[techman]

Your antenna could be faulty, so have your dealer run diagnostics on it. It's not unheard of to have a bad one.

 

[techman]

When the two companies merged, XM and Sirius they shutdown a lot of satellites. To fill in gaps they use terrestrial repeaters (not exactly satellite radio anymore).

Regardless, unless you live in the desert or open plains any satellite connection when you are MOVING is flaky. That's why they try and buffer the transmission as much as possible to avoid drop outs. Where I live in Mass, frequent drops are just too common and I won't pay for that service.

 

[bhal212]

Yeah, I think the buffering is either not working or doesn't work well enough to keep up. When we lose signal for longer than a second or do the 'cd skips' as we like to say in my wife's Jeep. It doesn't happen often enough to drive us crazy. In the truck, it fades out and back in sometimes 2-3 times a minute, which is much more annoying.

I'm going to have it checked out, but if its just how it is, I won't pay for it in the truck.