I have a Sirius subscription which I use at work. My indoor antenna sits in a window sill. Outside the window, there is an awning that extends out a few feet and the antenna does not have a view of the sky. When looking at the signal strength on the unit, I see that I have no satellite reception, and instead I’m receiving a signal from the terrestrial repeater in my city.
I have two separate questions here.
This setup has worked fine for years, but now the audio is too choppy to listen to. Is there any kind of antenna thats stronger or more receptive than others? I can’t exactly mount something outside, so it will need to sit in the same window.
On the sporadic days when this is working, as well as the past few years when it always worked, I could never get a good signal between 11:00am and 1:00pm. I was stumped at this for a long time, and I eventually realized what was going on. One of the overhead satellites comes just slightly into view around this time. So my receiver is attempting to switch to this signal over the ground repeater. It can’t quite do it, so I get choppy sound. My second question is - can I block the receiver from looking for the satellite? Or can I get an antenna that wouldn’t pickup the satellite?
Before you ask, no I can’t use the internet for it. I paid for a lifetime subscription and the 32kbps connection they offer me is terrible. I’m not willing to take on a lifetime monthly fee for the 128kbps service.
Where are you located (generally) and what way is the window pointing? It’s possible one of the other windows in your house might give you better reception.
Generally, the repeaters are only in really dense urban areas where there’s a lot of tall buildings to interfere with signal. Unless you’re right downtown, I’m not sure you’re going to be able to get a good reliable signal on terrestrial alone. The terrestrial signal shouldn’t be affected as much by line-of-sight, so you could try just taking the antenna off the window sill so it definitely has no sky view and seeing if that improves things.
When I was in a similar situation at an old house I took one of the indoor-outdoor antennas similar to this and simply suspended it upside-down from the end of the awning with a creatively re-bent wire clothes hanger and then rotated the little “dish” thing past 90 degrees so it was pointing at the sky. Worked great, and the wire is durable enough that I could close and fully latch the window with the wire going through it with no noticable ill-effects, either to the radio or insulation-wise.
The XM satellites are, but Sirius uses three satellites in a tundra orbit that always keeps at least one close to directly overhead in the continental US. This makes it a lot easier to get a signal in pretty much every situation except when you’re trying to use an inside antenna.
Oh, and sorry, I see now that I missed the “at work” part of the OP, so the other window in the house suggestion and probably handy-rigging an outdoor antenna are out.