Are you sure you have power to it ?

 

I put in a splitter when I hooked up my hidden antenna and am looking for a short antenna that will fit under the tour pack. Most of the time the signal is OK, but nowhere near as good as the original. I don't like the look of the relocation bracket. Any links on < 10 inch antennas?

 

Well if the hidden antenna is pointed away from the stations transmitter then the shorty should pick up the signal.

But like I said earlier, I'm no expert in radios. That's why I'm asking here.

 

FM antennas are what are considered omni-directional antennas. Meaning they don't have to be pointed. I also don't think that the reception of two antennas is directly combined at a splitter. If you have a shorty that works well it's not gonna improve it to add a hidden. The radio is only going to see the reception from the strongest antenna. I just don't think the hidden antennas work very well under fairings that are painted with any kind of metal flake

 

That's my point completly. If I'm riding away from the transmitter, the antenna in the fairing is not getting as strong a signal as the shorty.

Also, does anyone know if connecting the two antennas to the input of the radio will fry the radio as mentioned above?

 

big blue pearl

 

Pyro,
You can hook anything up to a receiver in the form of an antenna or combination of antennas and it wont hurt a thing. Now why you would do this is another subject, but I will stick to your questions. Connecting just the coax from where the other antenna was connected won't hurt anything, but probably won't help either. You see that is a shielded cable, so the center conductor is inside of a metal shield for it's entire length. Thats a good thing when it's connected to a proper antenna though. What you can do is short the far end of that coax together and then the wire will act similar to a long wire antenna of sorts. Feeding both the active antenna and the old antenna wire into the receiver will hurt absolutely nothing. If it helps you get better reception, then that's a win win. Just remember, there are always performance trade-offs when going with a shorter, less efficient antenna. I get the idea of style and hidden antennas, just understand that with those items comes performance issues in many cases.

 

Thanks Lowcountry Joe, My ultimate goal is obviously to just get better reception. If it helps having both connected then good for me if not nothing lost. Thanks everyone for your help.