Receiving BBC radio in the car in Germany

has anybody found a way of receiving bbc radio in the car? does this work with a DAB (+) radio?

i already get sky tv at home so there is no problem there, it is just that i love listening to radio 4 when driving.

ta in advance for any help.

Internet streaming via GPRS on the mobile phone or some pda ?

You can record your favourite radio programmes as mp3 files and then play it in your car. Admittedly not live but it works fine.

Short of strapping a gyro-stabilised satellite dish to the car there's little chance although GPRS based internet would work. BBC World Service (which carries a number of Radio4 feeds) closed down shortwave frequencies covering Europe in February this year but can still be heard on 648Khz in northern Germany. Where British Military Forces have a presence BFBS radio can be received over FM. Failing that, much of Radio 4's material is available on podcast so you could download it retrospectively and play it via MP3 player

648 AM (MW). Just make sure you're driving to work before c. 07:00 or after c. 21:00 ... and it helps to install a half-wave whip on your car

Mainz is too far south...

This is true, and technically it works relatively well in areas where the coverage is decent. However the costs will probably be very high rendering this not a viable option for mere mortals.

Bolt one of these on your car(hood is best because of space).

As stated before BFBS is available on FM just south of Hamburg and further on down to some unimportant other city.

Actually, it's not that expensive, but it is a lot of hassle. "Flatrate" (well, capped at 5Gb/month) GPRS based internet costs from €25/month, and audio streaming consumes very little bandwidth, but lugging a Laptop around, connecting and running it in the car, best with an external antenna and piping it into the car stereo is a lot of work, and prone to unreliabillity. For odd days out a pay-as-you go service (€4.95/day) would also work. On a recent train trip from Zürich to Munich I stayed with BBC Radio 2 over GPRS for most of the trip. Only tunnels managed to silence Terry Wogan.

I hear they're decomissioning the Jodrell Bank telescope if you need a few dB's more from your signal...

Edit: Hadn't realised the costs had come down so much, and 5Gb is more than enough for an audio stream for a month. Really the only way to make it work in practice would be to bury an old laptop in the car, powered off the battery, but then there are other problems to be solved. Perhaps there's a DIY Linux based project somewhere on the net...

Ol' Tel is he still going , bloody hell

I've got it now you need a house to go with this door knob.