Does whip antennae receive GPS or sat radio?

[sheamus]

I replace my whip with a stubby antennae. I feel like I lose satellite radio and GPS connection more frequently now. I though the whip was only for terrestrial radio, and the shark fin on the roof did sat and GPS. But I have seen the GPS unavailable sign a couple times on cloudy days now, and lot sat radio briefly under clouds or slight tree cover. It is infrequent enough that I am wondering if it is just in my head... I had thought those signals came in through the shark fin on the roof, which means the stubby should have no effect on those things?

[lapoolboy]

Whip antenna on the fender is for AM/FM reception.

[SilveradoRST]

Sat radio and GPS need line of sight with the satellite.  Clouds, trees and any other cover are the problem here, not your stubby antennae.  

[Wiggums]

Older GPS needed line of sight for sure, like the Magellan GPS 315 I had. Today's cars don't need that, my rental car had GPS that worked a few stories down an underground parking lot in Mexico City. Phones don't have much power going to GPS so it is more likely to need a line of sight, but newer ones can still pick up signals bouncing off of walls, that's why it gets less precise when you're driving down a street that has high rise buildings on both sides. Sat Radio and TV do need line of sight, but newer ones come with buffers so if signal gets lost, it still goes on for minutes. Pretty impressive.

 

Edited to add: I have never lost signal during cloudy weather. I'd want to have it looked at, that's unheard of even in cars that are ten years old.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Wiggums

[eppieguy]

For the last few weeks I’ve been losing XM signal going under bridges, trees and for no apparent reason as well. My Audi A4 and Corvette is having the same issues, I figure it’s something going on with XM and not the vehicles. I’ve heard of “Sun Spots” in the summer making XM reception spotty but I don’t even know what that means. 

[sheamus]

6 hours ago, lapoolboy said:

Whip antenna on the fender is for AM/FM reception.

 

Yeah, that is what I thought. It was cloudy, but I drove 200km with the GPS with a line though it signal showing, though nav continued to work fine. So it could have simply been a bug in the software. I have experienced a number of those for various other things, so that is likely the explanation.