Eightwood DAB+ DAB Aerial Car Radio Aerial DAB Splitter SMB SMA GPS Adapter AM/FM Aerial to DAB Shark Roof Antenna Signal Amplifier Car SMB Plug with Cable RG174 500cm for GPS DAB FM/AM Radio

Bought this about 2 months ago. I installed this myself onto a 2003 BMW 3 Series (E46).

The installation itself, i’ll go into further down. In terms of the product – I wanted DAB in my car, without having to install some big floppy antenna. Making this decision alone, should set expectations that the receiver quality will be negatively effected, based on this products small form factor. That being said, the quality is medium to good. I do get the occasional hiccups when going into tunnels/carparks, but for me, that is an acceptable result considering the cost and size of the antenna. I had no issues finding the stations I want and the quality is alot better than the original FM receiver built into the car.

I can’t comment on the GPS element of this product as I didn’t use it (I had no where to plug it in on the back of my headunit) In fact, I actually took the GPS module and cable out to make routing the rest of the cables easier.

Installing this unit:

When this came in the post and I opened up the box, the bubble wrapped unit was the only thing in there. No manuals / instructions / tools of any kind.

Several things I had to do for my car before installation, if you want the cables to be run under trim/carpet. i.e not visibly trailing all over the car.

-Remove centre console/headunit (so you can plug the antenna into the back of your radio unit)
-Remove headliner (to get to the underside of the roof)
-Trim/Panels around rear window pillars (allows you to route the cables from the roof downward)
-Rear seat appolstry/leathers (to route cables under the seats from the rear window pilars)
-Rear footwell carpets (I was able to route the cables through without fully taking these up)
-Centre Armrest/handbrake assembly/trim (to route cables from the rear to the front of the car)

One positive thing to note is that the length of the cables coming out of the Antenna unit are very long (5m), so there are plenty of routing options for larger cars. Or it allows you to take the “long” route for ease of cable mangement.

I had to refer to this page to get measurements on the diameters of the holes needed. The main hole is 10.5mm which isn’t exactly a common size for a drillbit. So I had to drill the hole with a 10mm bit and file the extra 0.5 off. There is also a small metal peg you will need to drill a hole for too (measurements not available for that…) I measured it at 4mm.

The next part is where it gets interesting. After I created the hole in the roof, it became apparent that its too small for the plugs to fit through it. The red cabled power connector and FM/AM plugs are wider than 10.5mm. The cables on the attenna end are soldered directly into a small pcb inside the fin. So they can’t be unplugged from that end and reconnected after feeding the cables through the roof hole. If you make the whole bigger, then the nut and clamp have very little surface area to clamp onto and run the risk of the whole fin being blown out by wind when driving. Its a mystery to me how these are supposed to be posted though to the inside of the car.

Another issue I encounted was the way the cables come out of the fin itself, if you look at the product pictures above that show the underside of the fin, the cables seem to be coming out from under the nut instead of through the hollowed bore hole. This means that the cables are left to be rubbing up against the sharp metal of the edge of the hole I cut for the roof. This is part of the reason I ended up taking out the GPS cable and board after opening up the fin. The FM, DAB and red power cable, just about fit through the bore hole, in oder to avoid them rubbing against sharp roof metal.

In the end I had to cut all the plugs off the cables, post the cut wires though the hole and re-solder/connect the plugs back on. Not ideal… But It operates sucessfully. The rest of the story is just fishing cables under things and putting half the car back togther… You will need to twist the red power cable into a 12v source, or the DAB antenna might not work very well.

Overall the job took me basically all day on a Saturday to do. Was it worth all the effort to install? Just about. Since the install, I haven’t had any issues with it working as intended. Minimal dropouts/loss of signal. And no sign of the fin itself falling off the car!

Hope this helps someone whos looking at fitting this themselves, as it was abit of a pain.