While I'm totally happy with my XM and it works perfectly and clearly 99% of the time, I have noticed one thing... it cut outs in certain spots. I follow the same route everyday to and from work and the signal always cuts out in the same two spots. One spot is when the road passes by an electrical substation, the other spot is when I pass near a cluster of some large antennas (radio, microwave, etc). Not sure if it is electrical or magnetic interference or what, but is often annoying. Both of these spots are otherwise open and free from obstruction such as trees, buildings, bridges. I'm using the XM micro antenna.

Has anyone else had these types of problem with their micro or regular antenna? I never saw any warnings or disclaimers to that fact in any XM documentation or website info.

 

I experience cut outs when driving in a heavily wooded area and a large branch hangs over the road, or when passing under some electrial lines. I have a regular XM antenna (the large ugly one...) and it is mounted on my back dash.

And actually, earlier this summer I was driving through St. Louis (on my way to Chicago) and I lost XM reception for about 2 hours... I guess it must have been a national outage or something? Hasn't happened since and I didn't notice anything in the news about an XM outtage...

 

Same thing happens with my Sirius and Terk miciro on the roof.
If your antenna can't see the satellite, it can't pick up the signal!

 

I had the larger roof mounted antennae for several months and switched over to the Terk mini. My reception remained the same regardless of the two. Driving around the area, there are several places where it is lost due to proximity of buildings and hillsides.

I read somewhere (probably here) that a lot of this is caused by XM's satellites having a very low orbit. When driving in heavy rain and fog, I have lost the signal completely for extended time periods. It is just like having the Dish Network!!

 

Their orbit is the same as every other geo-stationary satellite. 22,000 miles above the equator. It's just that the farther north you are, the lower the viewing angle to the satellite.

Not really. At the least the XM hardware isn't riddled with buggy software. If you are talking about rain fade, then most of the time that's caused by a poor dish install.

-Robert