Dab aerial for defender.

Hi. I'm new to the forum but in the past have found it to be very informative. Along with vids on YouTube have been able to get over various problems wit my Landy. I have a 2008 90xs and recently wanted to uprade the original radio/cd to a Dab/cd. I could see that on the forum there were quite a few suggestions as to what type of aerial would receive the best dab reception. Well, my Pioneer stereo came from Halfords, together with the recommended windscreen aerial. My son-in-law helped to fit it and with everything plugged in and connected and before installing, with me holding the aerial, it came on and was playing a dab station. That's without placing the aerial on the screen and earthing it. So, if this works on my Defender it should work on any.

Welcome to LandyZone

Digital Radio is an on/off thing. You need X amount of signal and it works, X-1 and it stops.
Depending how far away you are from the transmitter depends on how strong the signal is. If it's X+4 a piece of damp string will get good reception, if you are below X then you need a good aerial.
Outside/roof mounted aerials have about +10 of gain so will amplify weak signals and you still get reception. Indoor/window aerials have around 1/2 that gain, some less so it won't work as well over such a wide area as an outdoor one.
The signals are also transmitted in vertical polarity so a vertical aerial will always capture a higher signal level than a horizontal aerial.

FM radio is both horizontal and vertical so a screen aerial works equally as well, it's also a slightly lower frequency than DAB so tends to work better when hills and trees are between you and the transmitter.
Many radio aerials marketed as DAB are a compromise. DAB is 217.5 to 230MHz and FM is 88 - 108MHz, An aerial that works well on DAB will be poor on FM, however an aerial that works well on FM will work, but will be a bit of a compromise on DAB.

Welcome to the forum

Hello and welcome