Saturday, December 2, 2006
DIY: Outdoor XM Antenna (Terk XM6)
Related Entries: DIY
A weakness of XM Radio is the reception. Here in Seattle we have terrestrial repeaters so reception is not terrible, however, if your equipment (tuner) is in a basement, like mine, you might have reception troubles which translate to either no audio or drop outs. To combat the problem, I ordered a Terk XM6
outdoor XM antenna. The installation is very simple. I have a near flat roof and all my roof based antennas are in one central location (see picture) so it was extremely easy. All the antenna calls for is a RG-6 cable between your tuner and the roof. When I built my house, I ran six RG-6 cables to the roof for this type of use. 
The kit includes a F-Connector to XM antenna connector (SMB) which just screws to the end of your terminated RG-6. Then that just plugs into your antenna jack.
Before this upgrade, I had one to two bars on my XM tuner. Now, it reads full strength and have not experienced any drop outs. If you are experiencing XM reception problems, I highly recommend getting the Terk XM6
outdoor XM antenna.
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COMMENTS
Posted by Al at December 15, 2006 8:35 AM
Question - from what material did you build that antenna base module? Looks like cinder blox, what’s it on top of, and have you weatherproofed it at all? Are the weights attached to the base, or just placed on top?
Posted by Danny Mavromatis at December 18, 2006 5:34 PM
Al,
It’s a surface roof mount I bought from my distributor. I didn’t want to drill any holes into my root so I bought this type. It’s made to fit six cinder blocks. There are holes to mount the dish to. Let me know if you want more info. It’s pretty inexpensive.
Danny
Posted by Billg at June 19, 2007 7:52 PM
Looking for the correct xm input connector for my Harmon Kardon AVR 745. Help!
Posted by Jean at September 18, 2008 8:16 AM
Does anybody know if the XM6 also picks up terrestrial repeaters well?
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