[jezza___1]

I thought I would add my recent experience retrofitting a Kenwood DAB aerial.

First, as mentioned in the first post, don't do this unless you have decent soldering skills - or at the very least, don't overestimate your skills as I did mine. I made the mistake of wicking the existing solder off, and wicked the contacts away as well. Just use the solder that is there, and don't put too much temperature in - just get the wire attached, and get out.

Second, I found with the latch cover, after removing the two screws in the hand hold pocket in the bottom trim to allow the trim to move a little, if you squeeze the latch cover in at both sides, then push the top of the cover forward (toward the front of the car) while pulling down, it flexes the cover just enough for the securing plastic prongs to clear the engagement holes they go into. The cover will still put up a bit of a fight, but will slide off. This makes getting the bottom trim cover off alot easier.

With regard to the DAB aerial on the back window, while pondering the value of my ongoing existence after initially having a perfectly functional join only to decide it could be better and proceeding to burn the two contacts off, I noticed another aerial in the left corner of the window that looked distinctly like a DAB aerial. The only problem with this aerial is that it shares it's trace with the rear demister.

Given my new found power to remove the trace material from the window, and that I had already killed two of the contacts, I figured there would be no harm in breaking the trace connecting this aerial to the demister, and using it as the DAB aerial. I "rubbed it out" using the soldering iron, but while writing this I realised it would have been much cleaner and easier using wick.

After confirming no continuity with a multimeter from the demister to the aerial, sure enough, the aerial works quite well. Despite an embarrassingly ugly looking contact workaround, I get better reception from this aerial than I did with the small 3 prong aerial connected to the second pad.

For those that want to know, the terribly un-elegant solution I used for the burnt off contacts, was soldering the wire onto some copper tape, sticking the copper tape contact to the window using 3m double sided tape, then using electric paint to bridge the gap between the copper and the trace. To be clear, don't assume this is a fallback position if you stuff something up - I don't know how long this will last, and it's my intention to go back in later and do a proper job. If anything, this is a clear lesson in what not to do - just do it right the first time.

What burnt off contacts look like

Mil-spec repair

Finished product