Golf Mk3 Aerial Problems

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Mon 30 Sep 2002 14:55
Golf Mk3 Aerial Problems - BB
Hello everyone,

I own a '96 Golf VR6 with a "bee sting" aerial. My problem is that I can never pick up any stations on Medium Wave. (I know that MW is poor anyway, but I can't tune into any channel.)

I have noticed on other aerials that there is a wire wrapped around the main mast. Is this the MW aerial or am I talking rubbish as I know that household receivers have two aerial inputs, one for FM and one for MW.

Please help as the new football season has started and I can't listen to radio 5 live!!
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Mon 30 Sep 2002 22:27
Golf Mk3 Aerial Problems - Dave_TD
Do you put your car through carwashes?

My Octavia has the same problem, if you unscrew the mast you'll see that the metal part in the base has pitted and corroded. Wire brush (gently!) as much of the screw thread as you can reach, or use a tiny bit of 800 grit paper to restore the shine to it. When you screw the mast back in, you should find much improved reception, your radio should also pick up many more FM stations with the "seek" function.

If this doesn't work, the solution would be to buy a new base (not sure if you can get one separate from the mast), as it connects to the aerial lead just under the roof. I know that higher spec Skoda's have a built in signal amplifier in the aerial base, maybe one of these would help as well.

And the spiral piece of wire wrapped round it? That's for some models that had an integrated mobile phone antenna built in. Light dawns.....
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Tue 1 Oct 2002 08:19
Golf Mk3 Aerial Problems - BB
And as if by magic, Radio 5 works again!

Cheers Dave, and yes, my wife does put it through the car wash occasionally!

I didn't know that the spiral wire was an integrated mobile phone antenna, are these as good a quality as a separate antenna that's usually found on the back window? I wouldn't have thought so.

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Tue 1 Oct 2002 14:13
Golf Mk3 Aerial Problems - Dave_TD
I don't know, the same mast is fitted whether your base supports the phone aerial capability or not though. I would think it can't be far off, because they specify the use of GSM900 but not GSM1800 with it. i.e. Vodafone/Cellnet is OK but not Orange/One2One. Glad to be of help though! ;o)
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