Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

I am looking to replace my head unit and would like to get one with a good FM tuner. Is there a way to tell which units my have better FM reception.

The ones with the best antennas. Where do you boat? How far from the towers?

I think most marine radio specs are nearly the same for FM reception so it might not matter in that regard. I ran a simple dipole antenna under the helm that works good. If you want fancy, try
http://www.wholesalemarine.com/p/DUA-MA ... A_d_MAR16W

or
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000XBBJMO/ref ... B000XBBJMO

I actually have a good antenna (Shakespeare 4350). I have an older Maxxima by Panor Model CSC-737CD stereo system. (I also have the cassette version which I can just pull out and put the CD one in and there seems to be no difference) I've been out with others and had the same radio station on and theirs would come in fine and mine would fade in and out or just not come in. That's why I thought it may be the unit.

Thanks for all your replies.

I suspect radio technology is pretty much the same. They probably all use the same chip set.
You big difference will be the antenna you choose. I would invest in a good high gain antenna if I lived in a fringe area.
(bottom of a valley or 100 miles from the station.)

FM is kind of a short range radio, usually 50 mile radius of the transmitter. A REALLY good antenna might get you a few more miles. Unlike AM radio it won't 'skip' off the troposphere, and there aren't any 'clear channels'. I'm not a "Top 40 Radio" kind of a guy so I broke down and bought a second XM radio receiver for the boat. I think the second receiver is 6 bucks a month or something like that. Well worth it to me.

Good Luck

I have the same problem, FM signal is very weak. I have XM radio mobile setup so I just pull it from the truck and plug it in the boat. tune my FM boat radio to 88.3 and it receives the XM signal just fine, everywhere I go.

screwball wrote:FM is kind of a short range radio, usually 50 mile radius of the transmitter. A REALLY good antenna might get you a few more miles. Unlike AM radio it won't 'skip' off the troposphere, and there aren't any 'clear channels'. I'm not a "Top 40 Radio" kind of a guy so I broke down and bought a second XM radio receiver for the boat. I think the second receiver is 6 bucks a month or something like that. Well worth it to me.

Good Luck

I can get the radio station out of the Keys if the conditions are right and that is close to 100 miles but is over water.

Capt Sully wrote:I have the same problem, FM signal is very weak. I have XM radio mobile setup so I just pull it from the truck and plug it in the boat. tune my FM boat radio to 88.3 and it receives the XM signal just fine, everywhere I go.

Do the same as you and it's the only way to go, and its good to have other stuff to listen to than just music

There are a couple of lakes we go to where we get no radio reception at all. Our stereo does not have an MP3 input on it so we use an FM Transmitter on our iPod -- set the radio to an off-station and set the iPod FM transmitter to the same station -- and we then we have tunes on the toon.

This way we can have our "boat music" play list.